Romanian elections megathread
A small message in [RO] beforehand for those who can understand this:
Mergeți bă să votați, bă! Să scăpăm de marionetele PSD și de borfași!
With that out of the way, [EN] following suite, as I am also posting this on @politics :
Today it is a very important day for my country, as we’re currently having the 1st round of elections. Why this might be important not just for Romanians, and most importantly, who is running, you can find in this Politico article.
There are many other candidates, but those who are likely to pass the threshold and reach the runoff are just Marcel Ciolacu (PSD - Social Democrat but rather conservative), George Simion (AUR - far right, conservative) and Elena Lasconi (USR - Liberal/Neoliberal/Right but reformist). Currently, Ciolacu is the frontrunner, but while this might sound good on paper, in reality, his party is notorious for supporting cases of high corruption, and many of its members moved to AUR once it became more mainstream. They’re still against the idea of civil partnerships, which can also benefit same-sex couples, and they have been so most of the time. To get an idea, you can also check the takeaways after the presidential debate organized last week at Digi24. Small correction: Ciolacu and Ciucă did not skip the debate because of meeting with high officials, they just went to Antena 3, which is pretty much politically affiliated with PSD (something like Fox News, also spreading fake news about the opposition) and wanted to avoid difficult questions (Ciucă’s party PNL (Liberals), also gave the current president, which has a very low approval rating due to his expensive plane trips, his uninvolvement in the events and the unhindered rise in power of the intelligence, similar to the Russian ones).
So yeah, although Lasconi previously voted in a referendum for amending the constitution to state that a marriage can only happen between a man and a woman, as well as making some remarks that got her accused of misogyny, she is the least bad candidate on the table. Pro-West, pro-EU, pro-NATO, supporting Ukraine the most and pro-civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Here in Bucharest where I am, there’s an extra thing that we need to vote; currently the city is divided into 6 sectors, which are pretty much treated like separate cities, which makes it hard for its development. In addition, the City Hall of the entire Bucharest has a budget lower than that of all the sectors combined. Almost half of that budget goes to public transport, central heating and other current spendings, while the Sector Halls are doing almost all the investments. We have two issues that we’re being asked about: whether to have the City Hall split the entire budget of Bucharest, and whether the mayor of Bucharest should be the one to approve the new constructions throughout the city (currently he can only approve them only in the central area).
As of writing, the referendum has just passed the threshold for validation (30%), while the presence for the presidential elections is now at 45,98%.
I will try to update this thread if new fraud attempts or any other important events.
So far, the following things happened:
- The police contacted multiple people who posted online about the elections the day before. The persons were supporting USR, but were not party members, so legally they were not forbidden to campaign any candidate. Those who were campaigning for other parties were not contacted, though. AUR leader showed everyone how to cast a valid vote with an actual ballot, and pointing at his name. Far-right SOS leader Diana Șoșoacă filmed herself voting inside the voting booth, which is illegal. A singer posted a song about PNL right in the day of the election.
- AUR leader George Simion accused the government of massively fraud at the elections in diaspora. USR also reported some irregularities, but only at a polling station in Moldova.
- A vlogger was picked up and fined by the Romanian Gendarmerie for booing the current president at the polling station where he would vote.
- County Election Office in Argeș reported former justice minister Alina Gorghiu to the police for alleged campaigning during the election day.
- Sorin Ioniță, the leader of the Expert Forum NGO, called the local PSD organizations in Buzău to stop mobilizing the people to vote for Simion, said his organization will fill a complaint.
More news to follow.
Maybe I missed it, but are these presidential elections?
I assume so, since only single candidates are running and you were talking about the “first round”.
So what happens in the second? Does every citizen go vote again between the 2 front-runners?
If the “lower” candidates all announced support for one of the 3 at the top, what would the likely percentage be then?
@superkret
Yes. If the first candidate doesn’t get a majority of the votes (which is likely to happen), there is a runoff between the first two.
I don’t think that would happen, as the ballots just closed, but I don’t think that could have happened either. It is also a risky thing to do altogether. One of the candidates announced right in the middle of the election debate that he would pull out of the race, but I saw a jump for the Liberals instead. There are no less than 13 (yes, lucky number) candidates on the list, so things can get pretty volatile.
Ah OK. In German runoff elections that’s pretty standard.
All the candidates who aren’t in the runoff tell their voters which candidate they support for the second round.
But this might be a newer thing. In recent years it became necessary for all supporters of all parties to vote for whoever isn’t AFD.
So you’d have the candidate of the Leftist party telling their supporters to vote for the conservative candidate in the run-off to prevent the Nazi.
@superkret You mean who is going to support who in the runoff? Well, by the looks of it, it looks like all the democratic forces will either back Ciolacu or nobody. Simion and Georgescu will likely back each other, whoever comes in second, so it will basically look like Germany, sure.
If Lasconi gets in the 2nd round instead, I’m expecting most of the other candidates to back her. Including the whole right (democratic or far-right - just to spite PSD, but there can be surprises as well).
Just to get an idea, PSD never really lost a single election in its entire history. In the last (soon to be) 35 years since the 1989 Revolution, it spent the biggest time in power.
PSD is the direct descendant of the former Communist Party, so it has a huge apparatus all over the country. There’s basically not a single village where PSD is not present. This is why in the 2000 elections it got a landslide result against far-right Corneliu Vadim Tudor. And this scenario might happen again.