The Prime Minister announced that he is waiting for President Traian Basescu to set the day and time in which the former SEI head will take his oath
UPDATE 16.00
President Traian Basescu signed the decree appointing Teodor Melescanu as Minister of Foreign Affairs. At 17.30, the new minister took his oath at the Cotroceni Palace.
On Monday, after Titus Corlatean resigned from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister Victor Ponta announced that Teodor Melescanu will take the lead of the Ministry. The Prime Minister said that he sent the nominalization of Teodor Melescanu for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs to Traian Basescu.
Minister Titus Corlatean announced on Monday that he has informed Prime Minister Victor Ponta that he decided to resign from office, noting that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) is maintaining its position that there is no legal basis for the creation of new polling stations abroad in the second round of the presidential elections.
In a statement held at the Victoria Palace, the Head of Government showed that the first round of the presidential elections was impeccably held in Romania, and the problems noticed in the polling stations abroad, where Romanian citizens were not able to vote, were generated because of “the program and the procedures which are taking a very long time”. Ponta assured that the measures taken by the Central Electoral Bureau and by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to reduce the time needed for the administrative procedures and to increase the logistical capacity of polling stations abroad will be financially supported by the Government, based on a decision which is to be approved on Tuesday, so that these problems will be avoided in the second round.
Ponta continued his statement saying that there is however a political side, which is diverting the campaign and election purposes, and referred to the “inadmissible and unacceptable pressures made by President Traian Basescu and candidate Klaus Iohannis asking state institutions to break the law for the obvious purpose of disputing the outcome of the vote on Sunday”.
If the nomination for the head of the MAE will be accepted by the President, Melescanu will organize, “according to the legal and BEC’s provisions”, the second round of the presidential elections abroad, the minister stated.
In this way, the fundamental right to vote of every Romanian citizen will be respected, but in compliance with the law and the public institutions which will resist until the 16th and after to the illegal and illegitimate pressures made by the one who, on the evening of the 16th, will be the former President of Romania, Traian Basescu
Victor Ponta
Prime-Minister