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Romania's Social Democrats Take Lead In Key General Elections Amid Low Turnout

By RFE/RL's Romanian Service December 07, 2020

BUCHAREST -- Romania's opposition Social Democrats (PSD) have taken the lead in the country's parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results, riding a wave of voter discontent over the ruling Liberals' mixed results in their handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

With 99 percent of the vote counted in the December 6 elections, the PSD had 29.8 percent of the vote in the Chamber of Deputies and 30.2 percent in the Senate. The pro-European National Liberal Party (PNL) had 25.1 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and 25.5 percent in the Senate, the Central Electoral Bureau said.

However, the count does not include roughly 265,000 votes cast by the Romanian diaspora. Romanians who live in Western Europe have traditionally voted against the PSD, which they perceive as corrupt and in many cases the very reason why they left the country.

Even if PSD does win the election victory, the party will lack allies in the new parliament. President Klaus Iohannis, a former leader of the PNL, has said he wouldn't allow the party to return to government during his current term, which ends in 2024.

The center-right alliance Save Romania Union-Liberty, Unity, and Solidarity Party (USR-PLUS) was third with 14.5 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and 15 percent in the Senate, the nearly complete returns showed.

The radical right-wing Alliance for the Romanians Union, a party founded last year by a pro-Bessarabian activist and promoter of the idea of a single Romanian state including Moldova, will enter parliament for the first time. It received 8.7 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and 8.8 percent in the Senate, according to the results.

After an exit poll predicted an unexpectedly strong performance by the PSD, the new leader of the party, Marcel Ciolacu, said he expected Orban's resignation.

"It is what Romanians have asked for with their votes," Ciolacu said.

"The PNL thinks it is the winner of this election," Prime Minister Ludovic Orban told supporters. "We will seek to represent a wide array of interests."

The elections in the European Union member state were considered key to determining whether the liberals would gain enough support to embark on their badly needed reformist agenda.

The vote took place a little over a year after the PNL minority government took over after the collapse of the PSD cabinet following a string of corruption scandals and massive public protests.

The liberals, led by Orban, and Iohannis had sought to assuage concerns about the pandemic to urge voters to come out in large numbers.

But Romanians appeared wary of the pandemic and disillusioned with Romania's political class, with turnout only at around 32 percent, lower than in the 2016 parliamentary elections.

Romania, one of the poorest European Union members, initially handled the coronavirus pandemic with unexpected success despite a health-care system marred by an acute lack of modern facilities, an exodus of medical personnel, and endemic corruption.

However, a new spike in infections after the summer was not met with the same decisiveness. And the health-care network, still reeling from the first wave, was quickly overwhelmed.

Despite corruption and poverty, Romania remains staunchly pro-EU and pro-American, with Orban and Iohannis promising to launch a modernization campaign long delayed in the three decades since the fall of communism and to keep the country on a pro-Western path.

In 2016, the landslide victory of the PSD, the heir to the Communist Party and the political force that has dominated Romanian politics for most of the last 30 years, allowed it to unleash an all-out assault on the judiciary and the rule of law that brought tens of thousands of Romanians into the streets and prompted stark warnings from the EU and the United States.

Although weakened by the imprisonment last year on corruption charges of its former leader Liviu Dragnea and removed from power through a no-confidence vote last year, the PSD has the largest network of party organizations.

The PSD also dominates most of the local administration in rural areas, where it relies on a group of influential "local barons" whose left-wing credentials remain questionable but whose power is indispensable for the PSD.

Ciolacu, who has carefully distanced himself from Dragnea, has accused Orban's government of "incompetence" and failing to keep the spread of the coronavirus under control.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/romania-s-socialists -lead-parliamentary-elections-with-99 -percent-of-vote-counted/30987494.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.