Romania presidential elections 2019: Bucharest University invites second-round candidates to debate
The University of Bucharest and Europa FM radio station have invited the two candidates who will face each other in the second round of the presidential elections to a debate, Edupedu.ro reported.
President Klaus Iohannis and former PM Viorica Dăncilă were invited to a debate to be held on November 22, at the Law School’s Aula Magna.
This is the second invitation to a debate that the two candidates receive. The education staff union in Iași, USLIP Iași, announced it was expecting the two for a debate at the Palace of Culture in the northern Romania city.
During the campaign for the first round of elections, neither Iohannis nor Dăncilă attended any electoral debates.
Iohannis, who gathered the most votes after the first round, said he would focus on meeting his voters.
“The [Social Democrat Party] PSD is attempting to get attention through all sorts of maneuvers. I can already tell you – I will, of course, discuss this with my colleagues in the campaign meeting – I will focus on meeting the voters in the campaign for the second round,” Iohannis said, quoted by News.ro.
Meanwhile, Dan Motrean, the head of the campaign of the National Liberal Party (PNL), said on November 11 that the liberals and Iohannis decided not to attend debates with Dăncilă ahead of the second round of elections. The debate “would not bring anything extra” and would not clarify anything since the two candidates held public offices in the past years and their stances and political activity are well known to the citizens, the PNL campaign said, News.ro reported.
“The president is not afraid of a confrontation. I think the two candidates are well-known, they have held executive positions in Romania, their political activity is well known, their views are known, and a confrontation is not needed because it does not bring anything extra. I do not think there is anything to clarify,” Motrean said.
PSD sent on Monday, November 11, a letter to the election campaign of Iohannis asking for at least two debates between the two candidates.
“It is very important that citizens can compare the two candidates and elect the one who truly deserves to be the president of Romania for the next five years,” the letter reads.
“Mrs. Dăncilă has expressed publicly, on countless occasions, the wish to have a debate with Mr. Iohannis but her requests were left without an answer. The lack of a debate between the main candidates was a flaw of the electoral process and a transparency issue concerning their programs for the mandate as president of Romania,” according to the letter, signed by Olguța Vasilescu, a former labor minister who heads the PSD campaign team.
