Romania 1991
Following the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, elections were held in May 1990, pursuant to the acting government’s decree, to create a body authorized to adopt a new constitution. Both houses of this newly elected parliament was required to step down if no new constitution was adopted within 18 months of assuming office. One of the new body’s first acts was to appoint a 26-member commission of parliamentarians and extra-parliamentary legal experts to begin drafting; this commission was dominated by the National Salvation Front, which also held more than 70% of the seats in the parliament.
The commission began meeting in the summer of 1990 and presented a first draft to the parliament that December. After a short period of debate, the draft was returned to the commission for amending and further work, which took until July 1991. The bicameral parliament, sitting together in a joint session as a 509-member constituent assembly, had twelve days to offer amendments. On September 10, 1991, an article-by-article debate, including the more than a thousand proposed amendments, began. Ultimately, some 145 amendments were accepted, including some offered by the opposition and the Hungarian minority. Despite some sentiments in the general population that the parliament was too closely associated with Communist-era structures and personalities to be truly representative, the document was adopted on November 21, 1991, with a vote of 414 to 95 (thus substantially exceeding the required 2/3 majority).
Pursuant to the December 1989 decree, the final document was then put to a referendum for confirmation. The decree specified that the referendum had to be held within 30 days of passage by the legislature; the short time frame meant that no public information campaigns were conducted, though a small-scale pro-referendum campaign did occur and minor newspaper discussion occurred throughout the process. The referendum was held 16 days later, on December 8, 1991. Approximately two-thirds of the electorate turned out to vote. 77.3% of the voters approved the new document, though Transylvania, where most of the Hungarian minority lived, voted heavily against the document. The constitution was approved and took effect immediately, on December 8, 1991.