No person convicted of any premeditated crime can stand for election in local and parliamentary elections, the Chamber of Deputies ruled on Tuesday, which approved the two bills as a decision-making chamber.

The first adopted bill contains a key amendment to the law submitted by REPER MP Katalin Tenice, which initially prohibited persons convicted of crimes against minors (rape, pornography, human trafficking, grievous bodily harm, etc.) from participating in elections. ), to rehabilitation, post-conviction amnesty or decriminalization.

• “We started with the child protection law, given that the number of convictions shows that in Romania at least one child in five is at risk of becoming a victim of sexual violence before the age of 18. Rape. Pornography. traffic. Serious injuries. And so on. The fact that, together with my fellow MPs, I extended and passed this law for all criminals tells me that yes, Romania is committed to healing,” says Catalin Tenice, who submitted the original law with MP Diana Stoica (USR).

Criminals cannot run for local elections

Initially, the project provided for the banning of all persons convicted of crimes against minors (rape, pornography, human trafficking, grievous bodily harm, etc.) from participating in the elections until the moment of rehabilitation, both from the point of view of the local administration and from the side of the parliament.

• The draft law was submitted to the committee of the Chamber of Deputies with an amendment that extends the ban on being elected to state administration bodies to all persons who “on the day of the appeal, were finally sentenced to imprisonment for crimes committed with intent, unless rehabilitation, amnesty for convictions or decriminalization took place.”

The law was adopted on Tuesday at the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies with 248 votes “for” and one “against”.

Another bill prohibits criminals from running for parliament

To whom it may concern, the parliamentarians were excluded from the bill submitted by Tenice and Stojka, but were included on the same day in another bill initiated by 24 PNL senators and deputies, including Alina Gorgia and Raluka Turecka.

More precisely, in the bill Pl-x no. 480/2017 amends Law No. 208 of July 20, 2015 on the elections of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, as well as on the organization and functioning of the Permanent Electoral Body, and the following article is added:

• “(14) Persons who, on the day of submission of candidacy, do not meet the conditions provided for by the legislation, the conditions provided for in Art. 37 of the Constitution of Romania, reissued in such a way that persons who, on the day of filing their candidacy, were finally sentenced to imprisonment for crimes committed with intent, unless rehabilitation, post-conviction amnesty or decriminalization intervened.

And this draft law was adopted by the Chamber of Deputies with 250 votes “for” and 1 “against”.

• “Criminally convicted persons have no business in the parliament. Corruption has impoverished Romania and made Romanians’ trust in state institutions extremely low and the state weak and poor. Corruption expelled the best doctors, teachers, and engineers from Romania. Corruption also kept the most respected people of the community from participating in public life,” said liberal Raluka Tsurkan, one of the initiators.