The Government of Romania will take the necessary measures to fluidize voting outside the country in the second round of the Romanian presidential elections, Foreign Affairs Minister of Romania Titus Corlatean said within a telephone call in the program “Place for dialogue” on Radio Moldova station, IPN reports.

Titus Corlatean could not specify the measures that will be taken, but said that the process of filling out statements of responsibility outside the polling places will be optimized. “We wanted to avoid the rigging of elections in the diaspora as we were criticized after the last parliamentary elections. Thus, for the voters from the diaspora we introduced the signing of statements of responsibility by which the people pledge not to vote elsewhere. But this procedure took time and this led to the formation of queues at the polling places outside the country. We will not give up this practice, but the voters will have to fill out the statement outside the polling place. This will fluidize the voting process,” he said.

The minister also said that the Romanian authorities didn’t expect such a high turnout among the Romanians from abroad, including Moldova. “About 22,000 Romanians voted in Moldova, as against only 8,000 in the last parliamentary elections of Romania. Anyway, we increased the number of polling places,” he stated.

In the same program, Moldovan journalists Alecu Renita urged the Romanian authorities to raise the number of polling places in Moldova for the second round of the presidential elections. “More than 200,000 Moldovans hold Romanian nationality. Twenty-one polling places were established in Moldova. One polling place can serve about 1,000 voters. So, only approximately 21,000 people could vote. The Romanian authorities should take these figures into account and set up more polling places, at least 10 of which in the municipality of Chisinau,” he said.  

In the first round of the Romanian presidential elections on November 2, Moldovans holding Romanian nationality had to queue up for hours in order to cast their ballots. A part of them didn’t manage to vote.