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dezembro 14, 2004
EU beckons as reformist wins election in Romania
Fonte: The Times
EU beckons as reformist wins election in Romania
From Adam LeBor, Central Europe Correspondent
ROMANIA turned its back on the country’s communist past yesterday with the unexpected election of Traian Basescu, the reformist Mayor of Bucharest, as its next President.
The former sea captain won 51.23 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s run-off against Adrian Nastase, the Prime Minister, the favourite, promising to fight corruption and lead Romania into the European Union in 2007. He succeeds Ion Iliescu, the veteran former communist leader whose Social Democratic (PSD) party had dominated the political scene since the revolution 15 years ago.
Yesterday Mr Basescu’s cheering supporters flocked to the centre of Bucharest, many of them waving trademark orange flags that were also the symbol of Ukraine’s “Chestnut Revolution”.
Conceding defeat, Mr Nastase said: “It is the decision of the Romanian people and I respect it. I have congratulated Basescu personally on the telephone today. Basescu is the future President of Romania.”
Mr Basescu’s victory defied opinion polls, which predicted a clear win for Mr Nastase. The outcome will be widely welcomed in Brussels and Western capitals. EU leaders will decide at a summit in Brussels this week whether to close accession talks with the Balkan nation of 23 million people, and allow it to join in January 2007, a prospect more likely with Mr Basescu in power.
The PSD, the successor to the Communist party, held power for 11 of the 15 years since the bloody revolution that toppled Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. The years of PSD rule were marked by sleaze and corruption as the ruling elite regarded the public purse as a vehicle for enriching themselves and their supporters.
Dan Visoiu, of the Romania Think-Tank, which campaigns for transparency and the rule of law, said: “Basescu’s victory finally breaks Romania’s bond to its communist past. The people who have been running Romania for most of the past 15 years no longer have any significant decision-making powers.”
The shadow of the Ceausescu dictatorship was finally lifted, Mr Visoiu said. “A younger generation, one much less influenced by communism, will be running the country for the next five years. Practically, we can now say, 15 years after the 1989 revolution, that communism is finally dead.”
Officials from the European Union and the US requested that the election monitoring group, Pro Democracia, redeploy 3,000 monitors across the country in the second round of voting, after the organisation said that it would pull out because of the widespread vote-rigging that its members observed in the first round.
Stung by comparisons with neighbouring Ukraine, Romanian election officials closed several loopholes that appeared to permit multiple voting with no effective safeguards.
Mr Basescu now faces the difficult task of constructing a viable coalition government. He will almost certainly ask his own centre-right Justice and Truth Alliance to nominate a Cabinet, which needs to be approved by parliament. However, Mr Nastase’s Social Democrats won 189 of 469 seats in the parliamentary elections this month, while the alliance won 161. Mr Basescu said that he will propose his running- mate, Calin Tariceanu, of the National Liberal Party, for prime minister.
As Mayor of Bucharest, Mr Basescu defied Brigitte Bardot, the French actress and animal rights campaigner, over his plans to cull thousands of stray dogs that roamed the city. “I am elected by the people of Bucharest, not the dogs,” he declared. The cull went ahead and Bucharest’s 2.3 million inhabitants could again walk freely in the parks and streets.
As President, he will face wilier and more dangerous adversaries — the embittered apparatchiks of the former ruling Social Democrats who are soon to be deprived of their positions and access to the public purse.
But Mr Basescu’s supporters, both within Romania and in Brussels and Washington, are hopeful that his victory in the presidential elections will give him the base that he needs to tackle the endemic corruption and cronyism that has held back the Balkan nation.
Publicado por esta às dezembro 14, 2004 02:52 PM