Senate's Tariceanu: President Iohannis should've denounced intel service's protocols with justice bodies firstly

Romania's President Klaus Iohannis should have denounced first hand the protocols of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) with the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) or other justice bodies, on Wednesday said the Senate's President Calin Popescu-Tariceanu.

"Should the president be genuinely concerned and wish an independent justice and that Romania be a real rule of law, then, in my opinion, he should've denounce from the very first moment the protocols between the SRI and the DNA, and a series of other justice institutions, which so far has never happened. The president has this tool at hand, because he is running the CSAT [Supreme Council for Country's Defence, ed. n.] and as it has been talked about in the past, the CSAT, through the demarche it has started to deem corruption a threat to national security, it can very clearly say and make a delimitation between what constitutes a threat to national security and what constitutes an attack on peoples' private life, on individual rights and liberties that have been seriously violated through these secret protocols," Tariceanu said on Wednesday, at the Senate's seat.

He argues that "an unequivocally political stance was needed to publicly and politically denounce this kind of actions that are seriously endangering confidence in justice."

"The president, even if the CSAT has no knowledge of such protocols, because they've never been approved by the CSAT, which I can tell you from the time when I was a Prime minister [2005-2008, ed. n.)], I don't know what has happened afterwards, this is in keeping with the institutions and president Iohannis can answer for his tenure, but I believe an unequivocal political stance was needed to publicly and politically denounce this kind of actions that are seriously putting in peril confidence in justice and eventually the fundamental element around which the state is built. Finally, the state is a creation meant to serve and defend the citizen. I'm not the champion of that vision that, unfortunately, appears in the Constitution of Romania, too. The state does not start from its institutions reaching the citizen, but the other way around. It starts from the citizen and we create the bodies necessary to defend the citizens' rights and liberties," Tariceanu concluded.