Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu considers President Klaus Iohannis to be guilty of the problems that occurred at the polling stations abroad at Sunday's elections, with the Government official saying on Wednesday that a dismissal request such as the one made by the president in his case must not be based only on thoughts, questions and pressures.
Teodor Melescanu said in an interview with private TV broadcaster Antena 3 that the crowding in the polling stations abroad was due to the prolongation of the voting process, by the overlapping of the European Parliament elections with the referendum.
"President Iohannis is simply guilty of the problems at the voting abroad, who, two weeks after we set up the polling stations, at the proposal of the embassies and at the requests of some diplomatic missions, by a significant number of Romanian citizens, we reached at the number 441, after two weeks, he announced that he was holding the referendum on the same day. Consequently, from two seconds voting time, in general, in the booth - with the referendum overlapping the vote of the European MPs, it reached six - seven minutes and practically not all people could vote, especially in the crowded stations," the Foreign Affairs Minister said.
He added that the decision on the number of polling stations did not belong to him, being based on the requests and analyses of the embassies and consulates and the requests initiated by the Romanian citizens, which were fully met.
"To what extentthe assessments were real, to what extent administrative measures were taken in the context in which the referendum was held at the same time with the European Parliament elections, all these will be the subject of our investigations. In fact, of the 400 polling stations, there were problems only in about 40 and we will deal with them. We are not doing anything until we really see if there is a guilt and to whom this guilt belongs and then we will speak out. I assure you that the result will be made public very quickly," Melescanu mentioned.
President Klaus Iohannis on Wednesday called for the immediate dismissal of the Foreign Affairs and Interior Ministers, Teodor Melescanu and Carmen Dan, for the way the elections were organized.