It was an ignominious end to a failed presidency. In a surprise move that was announced on Monday, Romania’s head of state, Klaus Iohannis, stepped down on Wednesday after two terms and over 10 years in office.
His resignation marks the end of the era of a man who was once hailed as the hero of reform and the root-and-branch renewal of Romania, but now leaves office as the most unpopular Romanian president of the post-communist era.
Ilie Bolojan, speaker of the senate and leader of the center-right National Liberal Party (PNL), will serve as acting president until a new president is elected in May.
Iohannis’ second term officially ended last December. However, because last year’s presidential election was annulled, he declared himself willing to stay in office until May.
Although presidents in Romania cannot serve more than two terms, the Constitutional Court ruled that the extension of his mandate was legal.
Impeachment proceedings
His announcement on Monday that he would resign on Wednesday, about three months before the election, came in response to impeachment proceedings against him in parliament.
The proceedings were initiated by three far-right parties with the backing of one progressive liberal party.
Although it is unlikely that Iohannis would have been impeached before the May election — the procedure in Romania is protracted and linked to a referendum — the president obviously wanted to avoid being the focus of debate.
He described the impeachment procedure as a “useless” and “harmful endeavor,” saying it would only have been a distraction in the upcoming presidential election. He also said that it would have made Romania a “laughing stock” at international level.
Iohannis’ legacy
The hallmarks of his presidency were silence, absence from the public eye and — on those rare occasions when he did actually say something — statements that often seemed inappropriate and were sometimes hair-raising.
But Iohannis’ most serious legacy will be the fact that during his presidency, right-wing, pro-Russian forces in Romania grew stronger than they have ever been in the past 35 years.
Romanian observers are divided about what his resignation will mean. Some fear that the far right could celebrate it as their victory. Others say that it was a clever move on Iohannis’ part because it robs the far right of its allegation that Iohannis was determined to hold on to power.
Just what impact his resignation will have will only become clear in the coming months.
Difficult domestic political situation
One thing is, however, certain: Iohannis’ resignation will not eliminate the causes of the country’s current difficult political situation.
In a result that shocked the nation, the first round of the presidential election last November was won by outsider Calin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian conspiracy theorist who has called for the dismantling and break-up of Ukraine and glorified the Christian Orthodox Romanian fascists of the interwar years.
Although the Constitutional Court initially ruled that the first round of the election was valid, it later annulled it because of allegations of electoral fraud and a “hybrid attack” from Russia.
Although Georgescu is celebrated in Moscow, there has so far been no concrete evidence of meddling in the election, as claimed by Romania’s secret services and announced by Iohannis himself.
This is why a large part of the Romanian public sees the annulment of the election as an act of disregard for the will of the voters and an attempt by the hated political establishment to cling to power.
Iohannis elected on anti-corruption ticket in 2014
“The establishment” in Romania is a high-handed political class that has set up a clientalistic system that reaches into even the smallest public structures at all levels and whose most prominent figures are often embroiled in corruption scandals.
Iohannis won his first term as president in late 2014, riding on a wave of 18 months of grassroots civil protest against corrupt governments. Many voters hoped that the successful ethnic German mayor of the picturesque Transylvanian city of Sibiu would help Romania become a more transparent, more citizen-friendly country where the rule of law played a bigger role.
It proved too big an expectation to meet, but one to which Iohannis himself willingly contributed.
After all, the president in Romania has only limited influence on home affairs. Unless an allied government is in power, the president can do very little. That being said, as the most important public voice in the country, the president can get the political class to act by initiating debates.
Passive president
But Iohannis quickly gave the impression that he was not the right man for the job. He turned out to be a passive president.
Low points in his first term included the stripping of Laszlo Tokes of an order of merit — Tokes is an ethnic Hungarian pastor whose anti-communist resistance triggered the uprising against Ceausescu in 1989 — and the dismissal of the former anti-corruption public prosecutor Laura Kovesi, who is now European Chief Prosecutor.
In the first case, Iohannis succumbed to a nationalist campaign; in the second, to arguments relating to formalities.
During his second term, which began in 2019, Iohannis made a number of glaring public missteps.
Although himself a member of one of Romania’s German minorities, Iohannis stirred up negative feelings towards Romania’s Hungarian minority during an address to the nation in spring 2020, accused it of separatism, disparaged the Hungarian language and accused the Social Democrats, who were in the opposition at the time, of supporting the alleged Hungarian plan for the secession of Transylvania.
It reminded many of the darkest period of Romanian nationalism.
Iohannis later smoothed the Social Democrats’ path back to power, even though they are seen in Romania as the epitome of political corruption and resistance to reform.
Out of touch
At the same time, Iohannis increasingly withdrew from the public eye.
He was back in the headlines for the expensive renovation of the presidential palace and his official residences as well as for making expensive trips in a luxury jet — all things that did not go down well in a country that is one of the poorest in the EU.
Iohannis has been praised for ensuring that Romania has remained a resolute and loyal member of both the EU and NATO.
Domestically, however, extreme right-wing parties, who are calling for Romania to leave the EU and NATO, are now stronger than they have ever been in the post-communist era. Together, three far-right parties now account for over 35% of lawmakers in parliament after last year’s general election.
This is, among other things, also due to Iohannis’ presidential style, which is seen as arrogant and out of touch with reality.
His slogan in the 2014 presidential election was “President of a job well done,” which in Romanian was a nod to the image of the thorough, reliable German who does quality work. Romanian journalist and writer Cristian Tudor Popescu has since paraphrased this slogan, referring to Iohannis as the “President of a disaster well done.”
This article was originally published in German.
