Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana said on Thursday that if he wins the presidential elections, he will propose the change of the way the electoral system works in Romania, arguing that the „monopoly” of traditional parties must end.

„I am extremely happy and grateful that almost half a million Romanians have placed their trust in us. It is also a merit of this formidable team of volunteers from the Romania Reborn Movement. Hundreds and thousands of volunteers collected these signatures with considerable effort. (…) It is not easy for an independent candidate to do this. The procedure is tedious, you have to ask citizens to give you their address, CNP [social security number, editor’s note] and all the information that many citizens are very reluctant to give because they do not trust the Romanian state,” Geoana said, after submitting the list of signatures for his candidacy in the presidential elections to the BEC.

He announced that he „also conducted a small experiment”, by also submitting Register 176 „in digital signature format”, because in Romania of 2024, there should not normally have been hundreds of boxes and papers, bureaucracy and paperwork, but the signatures should be submitted, according to the law, on a simple memory stick.

„Changing the way the electoral system works in Romania, the way citizens can freely express their democratic choice, is my commitment and mission as the next president of Romania. This monopoly of the traditional parties must end. I have made this effort with passion and sincerity. We have no party machinery, we have no money from the budget and I genuinely did this out of the desire to demonstrate that in Romania it is possible to make an honest democratic effort, without needing either public money or party machinery,” Mircea Geoana said.

AGERPRES