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Romania

Iohannis upsets Ponta in Romanian presidential election

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It’s becoming a more German Europe in more ways that one.Romania Flag Icon

In a stunning upset victory, Sibiu mayor Klaus Iohannis, an ethnic German, defeated prime minister Victor Ponta, in Sunday’s Romanian presidential election, challenging confident predictions that Ponta would easily take the presidency.

Ponta’s center-left Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, Social Democratic Party), dominated both the December 2013 national parliamentary elections and the May 2014 European parliamentary elections, and Ponta entered the runoff as the prohibitive favorite after a resounding victory in the October 2 first round, when he took 40.44% of the vote to just 30.37% for Iohannis, the new leader of the center-right Partidul Național Liberal (PNL, National Liberal Party).

But Ponta’s 10-point lead disguised the fact that he fell 10% short of an absolute majority and, as voters’ minds focused on the runoff, Iohannis gained from a surge in turnout — from around 53% in the first round to over 64% in the runoff.

That’s despite the endorsement that Ponta won from third-place challenger, Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, a former PNL leader and the country’s prime minister between 2004 and 2008, who founded the Partidul Liberal Reformator (PLR, Liberal Reformist Party) in July, helped boost Iohannis to an unexpectedly wide margin of victory — 54.50% to just 45.49% for Ponta.

Iohannis, a physics teacher by training, has served as mayor of Sibiu, a city in Transylvania, since 2000, and he led the relatively small Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din România (FDGR, Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania) from 2002 to 2013. As outgoing incumbent Traian Băsescu receded from the spotlight after a decade as president, Iohannis assumed the leadership of the PNL, the larger of Romania’s two major opposition parties, though Iohannis also had the support of Băsescu’s Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PD-L, Democratic Liberal Party).

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Though the PNL joined forces with Ponta (pictured above) in 2011 to form the Social Liberal Union, it left the coalition in February 2014 to enter opposition, eyeing an alliance with the PD-L. When the PNL suffered disappointing losses in the May European elections, however, its leader Crin Antonescu stepped down, paving the way for Iohannis to reboot the party and become the joint PNL/PD-L presidential candidate.

Though ethnic Germans settled much of Transylvania, including the city of Sibiu, two waves of German exodus, first after World War II and again after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, have left few German-speaking enclaves in Romania. Today, just over 4% of Romanians are ethnically German. Continue reading Iohannis upsets Ponta in Romanian presidential election →

Romania

Aftermath of Romanian referendum leaves both sides with victory

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Romania’s president Traian Băsescu narrowly survived a referendum on Sunday that would have removed him from office, but his meager support in the referendum will only further encourage his political rival, prime minister Victor Ponta. 

Although 87.52% of those who voted supported Băsescu’s impeachment (just 11.15% voted against it), only 46.23% of eligible voters turned out to vote on the referendum — lower than the 50% threshold required to remove the president.

In many ways, the vote may be the best situation for Ponta, whose social democratic Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, the Social Democratic Party) has formed an electoral union with the free-market liberal Partidul Naţional Liberal (PNL, the National Liberal Party).  Băsescu, who belongs to the rival center-right Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PD-L, the Democratic Liberal Party), will remain in office, but with significantly less political standing.

Ponta, whose electoral union won a landslide victory in recent local elections, is now the undisputed top mover in Romanian politics, and he will go into November elections with a very strong hand, given that Romanian voters blame the PD-L for austerity measures designed to bring Romania’s budget down to just 3% of GDP (as required pursuant to the terms of a loan from the International Monetary Fund that originated in 2009).

Ponta also remains another potential troublemaker (alongside Hungary’s Viktor Orbán) for the European Union to worry about.  He may have gone too far in the past three months since becoming prime minister — the European Union has been sounding the alarm at top volume for the past couple of weeks that it is not happy with Ponta’s efforts to undermine Romanian democracy and already-fragile legal institutions — calling the referendum, limiting Romania’s Constitutional Court, stacking Romania’s parliament with his own hand-picked leaders.

That he called the referendum was bad enough, but European leaders had made clear that Băsescu’s removal would have not been looked upon kindly.  Ponta and his allies therefore will emerge from Sunday’s vote having punished Băsescu, but not enough to bring the full force of EU ire upon them.

Romania

Ponta takes Romania to ‘cusp of dictatorship’ as Sunday’s presidential referendum approaches

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Hungary’s Viktor Orbán seems to be in good company these days.

As it turns out, he’s no longer the only Eastern European leader who gives pause to European Union leaders worried about a backslide to democracy.

Since becoming prime minister of Romania in May of this year, Victor Ponta (pictured above) has taken an unorthodox approach to respecting Romania’s constitutional framework.  Ponta’s biggest gamble so far comes to a climax this weekend — on Sunday, Romania will hold a referendum on whether to remove Romania’s president, Traian Băsescu.  Ponta and his political allies argue that Băsescu overstepped his authority, and have moved to have him suspended from office pending the referendum.  Romania’s Constitutional Court has ruled otherwise, but the referendum is still going forward.

Accordingly, if over 50% of eligible voters turn out, and a majority vote to remove Băsescu, it could trigger even more worries about a quasi-constitutional coup d’état.  The European Union earlier this month issued a stinging report about Romania’s new government since Ponta’s ascension as prime minister, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso minced no words about his concern:

“Challenging judicial decisions, undermining the Constitutional Court, overturning established procedures and removing key checks and balances have called into question the government’s commitment to respect the rule of law,” Barroso said. “Party political strife cannot justify overriding core democratic principles. Politicians must not try to intimidate judges ahead of decisions or attack judges when they take decisions they do not like.”

Romania, a country of 19 million people centered on the eastern edge of the EU, joined the EU only in 2007 after emerging in 1989 from a Communist dictatorship under longtime strongman Nicolae Ceauşescu — EU leaders are currently assessing whether to permit Romania to join the Schengen Area — Europe’s free-travel zone which has no internal border controls.

Like most countries in Europe, Romania’s political climate has been altered by difficult budget choices in light of the sovereign debt crisis across the EU.  The country is dependent upon loans granted initially in 2009 from the International Monetary Fund in exchange for commitments to bring down Romania’s annual budget deficit from a high of nearly 7% in 2009.  Despite rapid growth throughout the 2000s, Romania’s economy contracted by almost 10% in 2009 and 2010, and grew at only an anemic 1.5% in 2011.

Emil Boc, whose Christian democratic/conservative Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PD-L, the Democratic Liberal Party, and which is also Băsescu’s party) won the greatest number of seats in the 2008 Romanian legislative election, governed until February 2012 and attempted to enact austerity measures in order to bring Romania’s budget under firmer control.

When Boc’s government fell, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu of the free-market liberal Partidul Naţional Liberal (PNL, the National Liberal Party), attempted to build a new government, with the support of the social democratic Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, the Social Democratic Party), the third of Romania’s three major parties.*  Although Ungureanu attempted to continue economic reforms, his government fell on a no-confidence vote on May 7, when the PSD’s Ponta replaced him.

Since then, it’s been an incredible two months for Ponta, whose government has attracted concern with staggering speed. Continue reading Ponta takes Romania to ‘cusp of dictatorship’ as Sunday’s presidential referendum approaches →