Early poll Romania’s best salvation hope since before Christ

By Robert Cottrell

Date: 31/03/05

Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the poet and politician of Romanian nationalism, looks like Elvis Presley and talks like Jean-Marie Le Pen.

He claimed last year that he was giving up anti-Semitism, widely seen as his favourite vice. But he still venerates the memory of Ion Antonescu, Romania's fascist dictator from 1940 to 1944, and he says that Romanians should be ruled "with a machine gun". Plenty seem to agree. In the 2000 presidential election he took one-third of the vote.

His popularity has been ebbing, but it took more than that to sideline him. He retired last month as leader of the Greater Romania Party after allegations surfaced of a sex scandal dating back 20 years, a signal from some dark place that it was time for him to go. He says he will remain his party's "honorary president", while launching a career as a television talk-show host and completing a doctorate in theology.

The Greater Romania Party, now called the People's Greater Romania Party, claims that it wants to shed its extremist image along with its historic leader, and be seen as a "conservative, Christian, moderate, national and people's party". It has one-eighth of the seats in the lower house of parliament, a useful asset if it does prove acceptable to the mainstream parties. A coalition of the Greater Romanians and the Socialist Party, for example, could upset the centre-right government which took office in December.

The Socialists, who lost power to the centre-right, show little sign of seizing it back. Defeat has mired them in a bout of score-settling between followers of ex-president Ion Iliescu and those of ex-prime minister Adrian Nastase.

But at some point the Socialists may recover. Or the ruling coalition may start cracking up. Those possibilities need to be pre-empted, which is why the idea of early elections has been nagging away at Romania's new president, Traian Basescu, since he took office in December. The centre-right needs an unassailable majority.

The constitution makes early elections difficult. In effect, the government would have to vote itself out of office. But look at the poll numbers and you can see the attraction. Support for Mr Basescu's camp, the ruling coalition of Liberals and Democrats, has risen from 32% at the election to about 50% now, while the opposition Socialists are stuck at about 30%. Without Vadim Tudor, the Greater Romanians may struggle to get into a new parliament at all.

The Liberals and the Democrats have been forced to rely for their majority on two smaller parties, the UMDR and the PUR, which deserted the Socialists after the election. These small parties switched because they saw that, despite the divided parliament, Mr Basescu's backing would give the centre-right the legitimacy needed to rule.

They were right. But one day the UMDR and PUR could switch back. That also argues for an early vote, if it gives the Liberals and Democrats a parliamentary majority in their own right.

True, early elections are always unpopular with voters. They would mean new tensions between the Liberals and the Democrats, and a new contest for the prime minister's job.

The European Union would prefer Romania to focus on preparations for EU accession in two or three years' time.

Mr Basescu understands that last point. He has clearly not wanted an election before Romania signs its accession treaty in April.

But after that, there is a window. A strong centre-right government, a weakened socialist party and a defeated nationalist party would offer Romania its best hope of good government since the Dacian empire collapsed in 44BC. If Romania goes for it, the EU should understand.

• Robert Cottrell is central Europe correspondent for The Economist.

Commentary feature on Romania's political parties and the likelihood of early Parliamentary elections.