NLP President Nicolae Chuke said on Monday that five series of elections in one year was “so exhausting” and stressed that combining some elections “is legal, beneficial and economical”. This, even though the current Prime Minister, Marcel Cholaku, has said that it is constitutionally impossible, and he does not agree even if it were.

Asked whether parliamentary elections should be held after the second round of presidential elections or between two rounds of presidential elections, Chuke said there was a risk that after five rounds of elections people would feel “fed up” and “worn out” of election campaign and not to appear at the polling stations.

• “The conduct of elections is based on legislative provision. The decision on the election calendar is established by the decision of the government. So, at the moment, I know that several elements of the election calendar for next year have been discussed, with several options. I can say the following aspect: our absolutely general analysis, not resorting to dates and terms and so on revealed to us the fact that for any person almost five rows of choices is extremely exhausting, and the problem seems to be that eventually people will be so tired of using the term that they are sick of the , which may mean the election campaign, that the final part of the election will leave us without too many voters. That’s why it’s good to think, analyze, let’s make a political decision about the number of electoral lines we will ask the population to come to exercise their right.” – he said, according to Agerpres.

Regarding the unification of some elections, Nikolae Chuke answered that it is “both legal and beneficial, and at the same time economical”, as it will allow to shorten the election period and spend less money.

Chuke also clarified that he had discussed “the principle, the idea, the need for a merger” with the PSD, but this issue was not discussed in detail.

• “We discussed in principle the idea, the necessity of unification. Which one, when?… We did not discuss,” he said.

In May, Alina Gorgiu claimed that opinion polls conducted by the PNL would show that 67% of Romanians are in favor of holding elections in 2024.

PSD does not want to combine elections

The interim president of the Chamber of Deputies, social democrat Alfred Simonis, said in August that the combination of local and parliamentary elections was unconstitutional and could only be used in emergency cases. Moreover, the social democrat noted that such unifications and changes in the electoral process “belong to banana countries, not democratic countries” and will benefit one party.

• “Commissions and electoral changes in favor of a single party (NLP, no) belong in banana countries, not in democracies, as I like to think they are in Romania. In June 2024, we will have elections to the European Parliament, and the European Commission does not allow the European Parliament elections to be combined with any other type of election, because it is good for each election to be held separately (…). We have seen that the PNL wants this merger of local government with the parliament, but it is constitutionally impossible. In this period, Romania has completely different priorities, because we are talking about European funds, PNRR, the pension law and many other goals that Romania must achieve this summer and autumn in order to attract tens of billions of euros, European money, Simonis said afterwards.

For his part, the president of the PSD, Marcel Cholaku, said that he does not support the unification of next year’s elections, even if such a measure would be constitutional.

• “First of all, elections to the European Parliament take place much earlier, and local elections cannot be combined with general ones. It is constitutionally impossible. It is being discussed, but I believe that it is impossible to do it,” said Marcel Cholaku in May.

Read also:

Three scenarios of merging elections. Chuke: “We will discuss, we will see what the specialists tell us”

What the PNL does not say when it comes to combining elections. Half-truth in the account of the party