Romania's constitutional court says it will allow President Ion Iliescu to run in November 28 polls, rejecting protests

Romania's constitutional court says it will allow President Ion Iliescu to run in November 28 polls, rejecting protests by opposition parties and rights watchdogs that his candidacy is unconstitutional. Romania holds presidential and parliamentary elections a month before it hopes to complete European Union accession talks and the next government will probably lead the country into the wealthy bloc in 2007. Earlier this month, parliament approved a change in the Balkan country's election law to allow Iliescu, 74 -- who cannot run for president after two terms in office -- to stand for the country's senate on the ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD) list. An opposition party alliance running neck-and-neck in opinion polls with the PSD, which Iliescu founded after the 1989 collapse of communism, challenged the revision allowing the veteran politician to run as an independent on its list. It said the constitution was clear that the president must be non-partisan, cannot be a party member or hold any other post until he ends his term in December and that the law revision was an attempt to boost the PSD's election chances. Moscow-educated Iliescu remains popular in the impoverished Romanian countryside and his name on the PSD ticket is expected to boost the ex-communist party's popularity after a poor showing in June municipal polls. "The law allowing an incumbent president to run on a party list as independent for a seat in parliament is constitutional," Ion Predescu, one of the court's nine judges, told Reuters on Monday. Predescu said the court sent a notification to Iliescu that he could go ahead and sign the law, the last step for it to come into force.