Repressive Past Haunts Sunday’s Romania Vote : Democratization: Thuggery marks volatile campaign. Citizens find free speech a difficult concept to grasp.

As Romanians limp toward their date with democracy on Sunday, ghosts of the repressive past they are struggling to overcome have haunted the election campaign and raised questions about whether the voting will be truly free.

The Liberal Party candidate for president has a black eye, inflicted by a rock his supporters say was thrown by a former Communist loyal to interim President Ion Iliescu of the National Salvation Front.

Ion Ratiu, another Iliescu challenger, contends that his rallies have been routinely broken up by pro-front thugs and that the governing party monopolizes the state-run news media in a concerted effort to ensure its power.

And the Bush Administration last Thursday briefly recalled Ambassador Alan Green Jr. to Washington for “consultations” in a gesture that State Department officials made clear was meant as a “public signal” of concern about the intimidation of opposition candidates.

Iliescu and his party dismiss the accusations of harassment as speculation and sour grapes among opponents who fear they are going to lose.

The National Front enjoys an outright majority of voter support, according to Romanian and foreign pollsters, and the tens of thousands who flock to Iliescu’s campaign appearances add weight to the governing party’s argument that it does not have to cheat to win.

The vitriolic exchanges among the three leading parties have made for a volatile campaign and an atmosphere of fear and distrust even five months after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu.

The confrontations, which have repeatedly spilled over into violence, illustrate the difficulties Romanians have in grasping the democratic concept that even opponents have the right to air their views.

“Romanians don’t understand what a campaign is supposed to be; they are the products of 50 years of darkness,” said Sorin Mester, a regional campaign director for the front.

Especially in the countryside, where Ceausescu’s tyrannical policies had their harshest effect, the reflexive response to unwelcome arguments is to attack and humiliate an opponent.

The National Front bands together former dissidents and reformed Communists in an interim government that took power after Ceausescu was toppled and executed in December.

The leading party has campaigned on promises to build a market economy and a democratic society. But the Liberals and the National Peasant Party, the only two challengers considered to have a chance among more than 70 parties on Sunday’s ballot, contend that the front actually seeks to restore a Communist order and is therefore supported by former Communists and agents of the Securitate, Ceausescu’s shadowy secret police force.

A round-the-clock protest has filled Bucharest’s University Square since April 22, demanding that Iliescu and all other former Communists be barred from the election. Hundreds of demonstrators have cordoned off the central square and barred vehicle traffic, and the tent city that has sprung up to house them is strewn with litter. Passers-by spew invective at the sit-in participants and shout for the police to sweep them from the square.

“They are lazy do-nothings who should be thrown out of the country,” said Alexandrina Apostol, a 53-year-old engineer.

Many of the young participants, when asked about the aims of their protest, appeared to be confused and offered contradictory responses.

“Former Communist Party activists should not be allowed to run,” said Ioana Geanta, 20, who said she works in a power plant. But she said Iliescu should be allowed to compete and be voted down by opponents of communism.

Adrian Nastase of the front leadership said the interim government has no intention of halting the demonstration.

“That is just what our opponents would like,” Nastase said, adding that the protesters are trying to provoke a violent confrontation that would cast the front as a repressive force trying to silence its opponents.

While the public tone of the interim government is tolerant, its supporters in the countryside have at times resorted to Stalinist measures to deter opponents. Sorin Botez, the Liberal Party executive secretary, said that at least a dozen local party headquarters have been broken into and ransacked by front supporters and that threatening groups of drunken laborers frighten people away from the party’s campaign rallies.

“Many people are supporting the front only out of fear,” Botez said. “The polls are not reliable because people do not feel free to say what they think.”

At a recent Iliescu campaign stop in Rimnicu Vilcea, about 110 miles northwest of the capital, front supporters angrily denounced two women shouting that Romanians fail to see the threat posed by the election of former Communists.

“You better get out of here before you get hurt,” a man shouted as the women moved through the crowd of 10,000, nearly all of whom had come to cheer Iliescu.

It was in the eastern city of Braila that Liberal Party presidential candidate Radu Campeanu was attacked after a campaign speech. About 40 people entered a hall and chased the candidate out under a barrage of rocks, bricks and bottles, one of which struck the 66-year-old Liberal near his right eye.

“The intimidation is so rampant that it is no longer tolerable,” said Ratiu, presidential candidate for the Peasants Party, whose list of grievances against the government grows daily.

His wife, Elizabeth, narrowly escaped injury in early May when workers at a Bucharest mental hospital she visited attacked her car and an escort vehicle, smashing the windows with iron bars.

“I am absolutely convinced that this is a deliberate attempt to prevent me from putting my campaign before the people,” said Ratiu, a retired shipping magnate who has been bankrolling his own campaign.

Front supporters contend that Ratiu is fueling the University Square demonstration by paying each participant $10 a day to stay at the site. The accusation is considered ludicrous by foreign observers, who have heard the story repeatedly.