{"id":39520,"date":"2019-05-27T14:24:05","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T14:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39520"},"modified":"2019-05-27T14:24:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T14:24:05","slug":"romania-court-upholds-jail-sentence-for-psd-chief-dragnea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39520","title":{"rendered":"Romania court upholds jail sentence for PSD chief Dragnea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The leader of Romania’s <\/span>ruling left-wing Social Democrat Party (PSD), Liviu Dragnea, has been sentenced to three and half years in prison by the country’s s<\/span>upreme court,\u00a0upholding a conviction and jail term for official misconduct in a corruption case.<\/p>\n

Dragnea, who is also a speaker of the lower house of parliament, appealed the initial verdict last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The court maintains the ruling from first instance”, the judges announced on Monday, giving Dragnea 24 hours to report to police in order to begin his sentence.<\/p>\n

Monday’s sentencing, which is final, comes after a 2018 conviction linked to the employment of two party members at a public agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dragnea is already blocked from being prime minister because of a 2016 conviction for vote rigging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court ruling comes after the PSD, the main party in the governing coalition, suffered huge losses in the European Parliament elections<\/a> on Sunday, falling to second place behind the opposition National Liberal Party.<\/p>\n

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WATCH: Romania’s health system in crisis<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The Central Electoral Bureau said the PSD got 23.7 percent of the votes, while the National Liberal Party (PNL) got 26.2 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

President Klaus Iohannis, a former PNL leader, said the PSD-led coalition had been punished “for the disastrous way they have governed the country”.<\/p>\n

The junior member of the coalition, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, gathered just 4.2 percent of the votes, below the five-percent threshold needed in Romania<\/a> to gain a seat in the European Parliament.<\/p>\n

Despite the coalition’s poor showing, Prime Minister Viorica Dancila declared late on Sunday she wouldn’t step down.<\/p>\n

Additionally, a non-binding referendum called by President Iohannis seeking to pressure the government into dropping efforts to water down anti-corruption measures won support from 80 percent of voters on Sunday.<\/p>\n

‘Storm of hatred’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A grim-faced Dragnea appeared in front of the cameras on Sunday night to say the PSD had faced a “storm of hatred” in the election results.<\/p>\n

Centre-right and liberal opponents, by contrast, racked up almost 50 percent between them.<\/p>\n

Young people and city-dwellers turned out in force to express their frustration with the government, with turnout nudging 50 percent.<\/p>\n

Asked about Monday’s court appearance, Dragnea was his normal defiant self, alluding to dark conspiracies plotted against him and “unimaginable pressure” being exerted on judges to find him guilty.<\/p>\n

He also surprised many by saying that he would not challenge incumbent President Iohannis in elections expected this autumn.<\/p>\n

Over the past three years, Dragnea and the PSD\u00a0 – the successor party to the communists – had courted voters in poorer and more rural areas of the country with generous promises.<\/p>\n

Despite not becoming prime minister,\u00a0Dragnea<\/span> wielded considerable influence behind the scenes and toppled two prime ministers in just seven months before nominating Viorica Dancila to the post in January 2018.<\/p>\n

Analysts say his focus on curtailing the activities of the country’s anti-corruption agency has lost the PSD many voters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The leader of Romania’s ruling left-wing Social Democrat Party (PSD), Liviu Dragnea, has been sentenced to three and half years in prison by the country’s supreme court,\u00a0upholding a conviction and jail term for official misconduct in a corruption case. Dragnea, who is also a speaker of the lower house of parliament, appealed the initial verdict…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}