Romania\u2019s outgoing centrist president, Klaus Iohannis, resigned on Monday as opposition hard-right parliamentary parties planned to have him impeached. <\/p>\n
The European Union and NATO member state, which borders Ukraine, was plunged into institutional chaos last year when little-known far-right NATO critic Calin Georgescu won the first round of a presidential election. <\/p>\n
After accusations of Russian interference – denied by Moscow – Romania\u2019s top court voided the entire election. <\/p>\n
With the two rounds of the election set to be re-run on May 4 and May 18, Romania\u2019s top court had said Iohannis, whose second and last term expired on December 21, would stay on until his successor was elected. <\/p>\n
But in January, three far-right opposition parties, which control around 35% of parliament seats, filed a motion to impeach Iohannis. <\/p>\n
With the motion up for a vote, and Iohannis deeply unpopular, analysts have said some lawmakers from mainstream pro-European parties could give the hard-right\u2019s impeachment effort the required majority. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe request will have consequences both domestically and abroad,\u201d Iohannis told reporters. \u201cTo spare Romania this pointless and negative crisis\u2026 I am resigning from the president\u2019s office.\u201d <\/p>\n
Senate speaker Ilie Bolojan, head of the Liberal Party, a member of the ruling coalition, will take over as interim president with limited powers until the election. <\/p>\n
The three hard-right groupings, whose support has risen since Georgescu\u2019s surprise win, had used their campaign against Iohannis as a reason to stage protests and seize the political agenda. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romania\u2019s outgoing centrist president, Klaus Iohannis, resigned on Monday as opposition hard-right parliamentary parties planned to have him impeached. The European Union and NATO member state, which borders Ukraine, was plunged into institutional chaos last year when little-known far-right NATO critic Calin Georgescu won the first round of a presidential election. After accusations of Russian…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}