USR's Barna: Local elections must be held as soon as possible, probably at the end of September

USR (Save Romania Union) leader Dan Barna on Thursday stated that the local elections should be organised in end-September and he pleaded for a vote by mail this time.

"USR believes that it would be better to have the local elections as soon as possible because the initial proposal made by PSD - in trying to protect the people from a possible return of the virus - to move the elections somewhere in March would mean to allow this narrative where everybody seems to be solely concerned with what other opportunities they might grab to continue in our country for another nine months, while the necessary reforms that the country needs would be delayed again, by the same amount of time. The local elections should take place as soon as possible, probably somewhere in end-September, if we want to be realistic. There is a risk that these elections will be regarded with a lot of mistrust, first of all, because people are still afraid to participate in the electoral process and, second of all, because of how we see campaigns unfolding during this time," Barna said at the online debate "Organisation of the elections during the pandemic. Scenarios from the political parties," organised by Expert Forum.

He added that it is very clear that the electoral activity will move online more than ever before and that, probably, there will no longer be seen such gatherings or caravans with a lot of people "crowding in the square and sharing leaflets while wearing nice T-shirts with logos on them."

"This I believe won't happen this time, regardless of how much the number of COVID cases will drop. We support, and this is one of the directions that we promote, the voting by mail, which we already tried in the parliamentary elections of 2016 and the elections to the European Parliament, although only in the diaspora, we believe we can use it in the local elections too," said the USR leader.