The articles from 370/2004 that you quoted contradict your thesis. They give the CCR specific power to decide to annul the specific election, and only if they find evidence of vote fraud " if the voting and the determination of the results have taken place by fraud of such a nature as to alter the allocation of the mandate or, as the case may be, the order of the candidates eligible to participate in the second round of voting". The court has already ruled in Tuesday based on this law, and they have explicitly found that no such fraud has taken place, and they have validated the results. And again, this only refers specifically to annuling one election, re-doing it the following Sunday, and only if vote fraud is identified.

The court yesterday decided to annull the entire electoral process, and not because of voter fraud, but strictly because of campaign finance violations. There is no such provision in that law or any other. The court did not "order that the second ballot be held on the second Sunday after the date on which the elections are annulled." - they ordered that the Government shall choose a new date, that candidates shall register a new etc. The next election will be, at the earliest, held in late February.

Also, article 2 was not followed in any way *. The current decision from the court was not based on any application to annul by any party whatsoever, the court convened of its own volition, based only on the declassified documents that appeared in the public sphere.

None of the other articles you quote give any such power. In fact, you'll see that the word "campaign" is not present anywhere in those articles. And yet the Court's decision is entirely based on problems they find related to said campaign.

* there was an application by two candidates to annull the first round of elections, those were investigated on Thursday and then Monday last week, and they were rejected. This new decision by the court is unrelated to that.

I'm not looking to get into a legal debate about this, as I'm not a legal scholar. You stated something factually wrong and I pointed you to the paragraph of the law.

The court is the single highest authority on constitutional matters and can pretty much decide what they want to on these matters, as well as how they interpret the law, but this is the case with every high court everywhere and it boils down to "who watches the watchers?".

What I stated was not fa tally wrong, you are misinterpreting the law or my assertions. I have stated, and showed several times in different comments, that the law did not have an explicit power granted anywhere in the law to annul the entire electoral process.

While the CCR is indeed preeminent in its interpretation of the law, it's every citizen's right to evaluate the law on their own and decide with their own mind if the courts are fair in their interpretations of the law. If the CCR came tomorrow and said that X will be the next president for the next five years because they are the best suited to do Y, I wouldn't have to accept their view as a fair reading of the law/Constitution. It's not like I'm claiming I have some right to block the Court's decision, I'm just saying that by my own mind they are in blatant disregard of the legal framework.

Yes, the CCR can probably get away with what they’ve done, but when we’ve finished processing this there’s good chances that the decision will be proven to have been made outside of the court’s strict mandate.

And even if they have a good excuse, the optics are very bad and potentially fatal for whatever is left of the trust in Romanian institutions.

Who will decide that the court has acted outside its own mandate? They are the only authority on constitutional matters. If you're referring to "the people" - based on what I've seen there's no street protesting going on over this.

> And even if they have a good excuse, the optics are very bad and potentially fatal for whatever is left of the trust in Romanian institutions.

Completely agree.

I don’t know. Probably the posterity :)

Given political support (with the exception of Lasconi) for the annulment, I expect that nothing will happen in the near future.

Regarding Article 52, paragraph one, there is no proof of fraud. In fact, if I’m not mistaken a vote recount was done and the court accepted the results as valid.

There is an allegation of foreign influence which has not been proven in a court of law.

IMO the court has acted beyond its mandate and only made things worse.

By the way, where is the report from SRI? The internet is full of newspapers which quote it, but don’t link to the original document. From those articles, there is no smoking gun against the candidate themselves. Just some guy which paid people on Tiktok, with no statement on that guy’s connection to the candidate.

Here are links to the SRI reports [0][1], taken from this news site [2] (where you can also find SIE and MAI reports).

[0] https://s.iw.ro/gateway/g/ZmlsZVNvdXJjZT1odHRwJTNBJTJGJTJG/c...

[1] https://s.iw.ro/gateway/g/ZmlsZVNvdXJjZT1odHRwJTNBJTJGJTJG/c...

[2] https://m.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/politica/klaus-iohanni...

We're getting in murky waters about legally debating what constitutes as "proof" to a court that is the sole authority on the constitution and whether they need something to be proven in a different court to act. The vote recount you mention was a different court decision, not connected to this one, which stemmed from a new complaint.

While there is no smoking gun against the candidate, the declassified documents show that intelligence agencies believe a foreign state actor to have been involved in the candidate's TikTok campaign.