POLITICS: Romania Faces Political Uncertainty

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Dec 13 2004 (IPS) - The unexpected victory of opposition leader Traian Basescu has brought new political uncertainties to Romania.

He won the presidential election held Sunday but his party failed to muster majority in parliament, and this may force a snap parliamentary election.

But for the first time in 15 years, Romanians do not fear a fundamental change in political direction. People do not anticipate any more of the stagnation of the early post-communist years, because Romania is due to join the European Union (EU) in 2007.

With almost all the votes counted from Sunday’s election, Basescu, 53, the charismatic mayor of Bucharest and head of the centre-right Justice and Truth Alliance (DA) had 51.75 percent of the vote compared to 48.25 percent for Prime Minister Adrian Nastase of the ruling Social Democracy Party (PSD).

Basescu made the fight against corruption the centrepiece of his election campaign. He also promised to push forward economic reform and to lower taxes.

In Romania unlike most European countries the president names the prime minister, who forms the government. Basescu’s victory means he will give that post to someone from his centrist alliance, which has not won the majority in the 332-seat lower house of parliament.

"I am totally supporting the idea that the DA alliance is to form the next government and we are open to discussion with any democratic force, excepting the ex-communists from the PSD," Basescu said Monday.

But the only possible allies for the DA are a small pro-business party (PUR) and the party representing ethnic Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), both close to the PSD. "I am sure that many PSD turncoats will appear in the next few days and weeks to ‘help’ Basescu form a government," political analyst Alexandru Purcarus told IPS. But this would not bring a strong government that could speed up reforms to secure EU entry, he said.

"This is why there must be fresh parliamentary elections next year," he said. "According to the Constitution, Basescu can call new parliamentary elections after 60 days and two attempts to form a government. These could be held in very different conditions to the last ones, leading to a very different result."

But this kind of political gambling will do little for someone like Petre Stanciu, 62, living on less than 100 dollars a month. "I am not very interested who will run Romania in the next five years as in my opinion whoever comes to power, they do things only for themselves." Such views are common among about a third of Romania’s population of 21.5 million living below the poverty line.

"Corruption and poverty were the top issues of these elections, but despite many promises the parties made during the electoral campaign, nobody took them very seriously," says Sorin Ionita, executive director of the Romanian Academic Society (SAR), a leading think-tank.

Whoever ends up in charge will face the tough task of speeding up reforms necessary to take Romania to EU membership, Ionita says. "For now, the only way to differentiate them is their aimed political effectiveness in accelerating changes required by the EU," Ionita said.

"When you have the same bunch of people in power for 11 out of 15 years of transition, with a corrupt political class and weak judiciary, sheer rotation of power becomes necessary for the health of the society," Ionita added.

Romania is scheduled to join the EU alongside neighbouring Bulgaria in 2007. Negotiations with the EU ended early this month, but Brussels has expressed frustration that Romania is still far off the mark in meeting the bloc’s stringent human rights and rule of law standards.