Melescanu resigns after problematic voting in Romanian diaspora

Teodor Melescanu announced his stepping down as Minister of Foreign Affairs after only eight days from his appointment, determined by the scandal that has burst out in the Romanian diaspora after Sunday’s presidential election.

Melescanu said during a press conference that he regrets the failures occurred during the run-off and apologized to the Romanian citizens for standing in line for hours and for not being able to vote, as happened to some of them and consequently, someone must take responsibility for the situation.

“As we live in a country where no one really takes responsibility and the only concern is placing responsibilities to each other, I, as a man of honor, I take this responsibility and I will submit my resignation as Minister of Foreign Affairs today, during the government session”, stated him.

He also explained that the Law no. 370/2004 which regulates elections in Romania has too many shortcomings considering the current environment and that it should be amended so as to introduce a modern voting mechanism for Romanian citizens that left the country, for such incidents to not happen again.

 Voices in Romanian politics, principally from opposition, have asked his resignation after thousands of Romanians living abroad had queued for hours to vote in cities such as Paris, London, Turin, Munich or Stuttgart, many of them not succeeding in exercising their constitutional right. His predecessor, Titus Corlatean, quit due to the same poor organization of polling places in the first round of presidential elections, yet the Romanian Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not take any effective  measures to increase the number of polling places and, thus, to possibly avoid the situation to repeat in the run-off.