In the current circumstances, it may be understandable, in the initial phase, to keep President Iohannis in office. After the annulment of the presidential elections by the Constitutional Court, just a few days before the parliament ceased its activity and entered a new legislature, we are certainly in an unprecedented situation, in the midst of a political earthquake, and the need for a stable point was logical.
„Romania is a stable country, a safe country, and a solid country. I say this for the economy, for investors, for the financial markets. I say this for the European Union. Romania is and remains a safe, solid, pro-European country.”
It was a statement by the president, shortly after the CCR decision, absolutely necessary not only for the domestic audience but also for the external one, for the business people who were already seriously considering exit plans.
However, it would have been preferable for the extension of the president's mandate to be announced by the CCR and, as we understand was written in an initial form of the Court's decision, for a limited period.
Initially, the decision spoke about extending the mandate based on art 83 para 2 of the Constitution, because the position cannot remain vacant, but it required that the presidential elections be organized within 3 months from the publication of the annulment in the Official Gazette, mirroring the term provided by the Constitution for organizing elections in the case of the removal through a referendum of the suspended president. However, the term disappeared from the provision.
But once the initial moment of astonishment, of panic, has passed, after the new parliament gets down to business, meaning at the end of next week, after the leadership of the two chambers is elected, Klaus Iohannis should resign to not worsen a legacy that has brought us into this political nightmare.
Klaus Iohannis's Fault
Klaus Iohannis is the main culprit for the immense institutional failure that made the situation of November 24 possible. SRI and SIE, under whose noses the problem that exploded during the elections grew, are institutions whose leadership is proposed by the president.
Klaus Iohannis proposed Gabriel Vlase, who in the midst of a security crisis was flying with private planes to the Formula 1 race in Baku. SRI has had no civilian leadership for a year and a half.
Klaus Iohannis had 10 years as his main task the area of national security, and as the president of CSAT, he should have closely monitored the activity of the services. Under his reign, the institutional degradation occurred, which led to SRI only informing him, without details, after the first round, "that certain things are strange". Meaning what we all saw with the naked eye.
Klaus Iohannis was a co-author of the political failure that made the traditional parties and their candidates the target of the people's hatred. The creation of the PSD-PNL coalition was not the biggest problem. It was the fact that it did not deliver a quality governance act, did not deliver reforms, but only maneuvers, defiance, inflation, lies, and annoyance.
Klaus Iohannis destroyed the PNL by imposing presidents with no connection to him, he destroyed its internal life and natural evolution, healthy internal competition. Surely the liberals, out of convenience or fear, were complicit in their own emasculation and paid the price in the elections, a price that would have been even higher without the salutary intervention of Ilie Bolojan, one of the valuable liberals kept at a distance by Klaus Iohannis's hatred.
Klaus Iohannis dragged Romania into the embarrassing adventure of his candidacy for the NATO leadership, absolutely without a chance and with a painful provincialism.
Klaus Iohannis has become the symbol of ostentation, of reaching pharaonic levels of parvenu with his defiantly luxurious expenses. Private planes worthy of oligarchs, a sumptuous villa with grandiose facilities, exotic trips, secret public money expenditures, the lack of a minimum respect for the electorate, all have made Klaus Iohannis the most detested among Romania's presidents and the most toxic.
The scores of the traditional parties that stuck with him, especially the PNL score, reflect this practically unanimous aversion and the immense cost of the contagion caused by the presidential political touch.
In these conditions, extending Klaus Iohannis's mandate beyond the few days of total confusion and transfer between the old and new parliament may lead the future presidential elections to have an even more marked result of hatred than those of November 24, this time even without the distortion of the campaign on Tik Tok and without Russian interventions.
Every day that Mr. Iohannis spends at the Cotroceni Palace will be an argument for a revenge vote, a gift for extremists, regardless of which candidates they will represent.
Leave!
If he has a shred of decency, if the apologies he presented in the December 1 message had even a hint of sincerity, Mr. Iohannis has only one thing to do. Resign.
After the installation of a new Senate president, who can take over the constitutional interim of the presidential function, Mr. Iohannis should hand over his prerogatives and step aside to allow a beginning of healing in political life. Just as the heads of the institutions responsible for the epic failure that marked the presidential elections should be urgently replaced.
It is the only thing Mr. Iohannis can still do for the country he did not care about and which paid for all his whims for 10 years.
If the presidential elections remain under the seal of this mandate extension, if each stage of the future government, starting with the designation of the prime minister and the swearing-in, will have him at the center of the picture, if each decision of the parties will remain under suspicion that it is dictated by his personal interests, as it has happened so far, no matter who will run on the non-extremist side, they will not be able to escape Iohannis's anathema and will pay a huge price.
The only good thing Iohannis can do for this country is to disappear immediately so we can move on. For Romania to remain a safe, solid, pro-European country.