Ex-Communist, Rightist Headed for Presidential Runoff in Romania

Moderate center-right politicians suffered sweeping rejection by Romanian voters in elections Sunday, according to exit polls, with first-place finisher Ion Iliescu, a former Communist, headed for a presidential runoff against a hard-line ultranationalist.

Iliescu’s left-leaning Party of Social Democracy appeared on course to dominate the next Parliament and install the party’s No. 2 figure, Adrian Nastase, 51, as prime minister but probably only in coalition with a smaller party, the exit polls showed.

The only politicians reacting like winners Sunday evening were Sen. Corneliu Vadim Tudor, 50, and members of his Greater Romania Party, which advocates the country’s territorial expansion through absorption of the former Soviet republic of Moldova and parts of Bulgaria.

“Life is beautiful,” Tudor declared at a celebration at his party headquarters.

Tudor--seen by his critics as anti-Semitic, anti-Hungarian and anti-Roma, or anti-Gypsy--beat out several center-right rivals to make it into the presidential runoff against Iliescu, 70, who was Romania’s president from 1990 to 1996. Tudor’s party is set to become the leading opposition force in Parliament, the exit polls showed.

“No one should be afraid if I become president,” Tudor said Sunday evening, in an acknowledgment that many here see him as a dangerous politician. “Only thieves and corrupt people should be afraid. I will make sure the laws work to punish those who robbed the country.”

Hard-Liner Says He Can Cut Iliescu’s Lead

Partial official results are expected only later this week. But Romanian exit polls have proved broadly reliable, and according to surveys by three agencies, Tudor had more than double the support of the third-place finisher, Theodor Stolojan, 57, a former prime minister and former World Bank official. The exit polls showed Iliescu at about 37%, Tudor at 27%, Stolojan at 12% and incumbent Prime Minister Mugur Isarescu at 10%.

Analysts generally give Tudor virtually no chance of winning the Dec. 10 presidential runoff, but he insisted that he can overcome Iliescu’s lead. “In two weeks, I can make it up doing some live television shows,” he said.

While the mood was less celebratory at Iliescu’s headquarters, the results still show his Party of Social Democracy on the way to taking control of the government, with Nastase the strong favorite to become Romania’s next prime minister after the new Parliament is sworn in early next year, party officials say.

Social Democracy Party ‘Moderate,’ Official Says

Nastase stressed Sunday night that his party is a “center-left party that is moderate and tolerant” and that he expects to preside over a government that will pursue “Western values and the national interest.”

“We want to relaunch the economy, fight poverty and corruption, and seek integration into the European Union and NATO,” Nastase said. He added that it was too soon to say whether the party would govern alone or with a coalition partner, but both he and Iliescu ruled out any coalition with Tudor’s forces.

A decline in living standards and a widespread belief that government leaders are corrupt played a key role in prompting the voter backlash against the reformist center-right coalition that has led Romania the past four years under President Emil Constantinescu, who declined to seek reelection in the face of virtually certain defeat.

In parliamentary voting, the Party of Social Democracy had about 40% support, with the Greater Romania Party at 23%, Stolojan’s moderate National Liberal Party at 11%, the Democratic Party at 8% and the Hungarian Democratic Union at 8%. Only those parties appeared likely to be represented in Parliament, according to the exit polls.

The ruling Democratic Convention, a coalition of five parties, failed to win any parliamentary seats, according to the exit polls. Under Romanian election laws, a party must win at least 5% of the nationwide vote to enter Parliament, while a coalition of four parties or more must win at least 10%. The Democratic Convention won only about 7%, according to the exit polls. Seats are allocated to the successful parties according to their percentage of the vote.