MEP Diana Șoșoacă, president of S.O.S. Romania, sent an open letter to US President Donald Trump in which she speaks at length about what she describes as abuses by the authorities by banning inconvenient candidates from the presidential elections and using Romanian state institutions as a political weapon.
”To U.S. President Donald Trump
The intervention of the Romanian Constitutional Court against the candidates for the presidential elections represents an unprecedented fact and a de facto annulment of democracy in Romania, an EU and NATO member state and strategic partner of the United States.
The fact that the CCR prohibits some people from Romania from running for president, although there is no final criminal conviction prohibiting them from running for office, is proof that democracy is dead in Romania and is a signal to citizens around the world to stop believing in democracy. Surely Romanians already have no confidence in this concept that has become empty of content!
Romania was a good business for the great powers, but not for Romanians. Enough that the big transnational companies and the European Union have profited from my country, they should at least let the Romanians elect their own president as they see fit. Now that they have been denied this right, the revolt of the population is at unsuspected levels, and the apparent silence should not deceive anyone: discontent can generate a new revolution at any time, and this means destabilization and insecurity, which is in no one’s interest.
Romania can and must be a pole of stability in the region and a promoter of peace, but this cannot be achieved in the absence of democracy and by the categorical refusal of the power to allow candidacies for presidential elections according to the law. On October 5, 2024, I was the first candidate to be banned from running for the presidential elections by the CCR. I warned then that the precedent created would be used again and again when the Deep State needed to settle its accounts. As a result of the CCR’s intervention against me, based on political statements for which I benefited from immunity, the elections in Romania ended up being canceled, and now their resumption is called into question again by the CCR’s intervention against some candidates.
On Thursday, March 13, I will submit again my candidacy for the presidential elections, fulfilling all the legal conditions. The CCR or, more recently, the Central Electoral Bureau, these two institutions that are not courts of law and do not have the right to prohibit any candidacy, have become unconstitutional censors that annul without the right of appeal the right of some Romanians to run and the right of other Romanians to vote for those they consider deserving.
Romania has thus become an experiment in the destruction of democracy by forcefully intervening against constitutional rights, and this has long gone beyond the country’s borders.
For the return to democracy, it is necessary that all candidates who meet the legal conditions be allowed to run, and the people are sovereign and have the right to elect their president as they see fit. Otherwise, we must take note of the end of democracy in Romania and the uselessness of elections that turn into a useless expenditure of money. And the effects on the EU and NATO are incalculable: citizens around the world will see that democracy is just a façade that no longer even keeps up appearances!”
MEP Av. Diana Iovanovici-Șoșoacă
President of the S.O.S. Romania Party
Banned candidate in the 2024 presidential elections
