Politics

Went to sleep with one president and woke up with the other!

December 7, 2009 /
Mircea Geoana, the Social Democratic Party (left) and Traian Basescu, the Liberal Democratic Party (right) during the single presidential debate on TV. Photo source: www.basescu.ro
Mircea Geoana, the Social Democratic Party (left) and Traian Basescu, the Liberal Democratic Party (right) during the single presidential debate on TV. Photo source: www.basescu.ro

The Americans have seen this in 2000, when George Bush won his first term in office over Al Gore. Of course, the scale is different, but the feeling is the same. Incumbent President Traian Basescu managed to have an overnight win over social-democrat Mircea Geoana. From over 18,000,000 million people who were eligible to vote, approximately 10,600,000 went to vote and the difference between the two is of approximately 70,000 votes. On December 6, at 9 pm polls announced a 51.6% win for Mircea Geoana, who proclaimed victory. The polls were based on the results of the votes till 7pm. The voting ended at 9pm and it seems that Traian Basescu managed to catch up and take the lead with 50.33%. This is also what happened five years ago, when he had won the same way over Adrian Nastase, the candidate of the same Social Democratic Party. Now, there are some lessons to learn from this:

  • never trust polls ….. not at least in elections.
  • if all the political parties unite against one political party, that does not necessarily mean that the new coalition wins.
  • if something can go wrong, it will go wrong….I mean that in times of economic crisis, overlapped with a two-month political crisis, the situation is likely to worsen….the coalition has a majority in parliament, which means that the government will not be endorsed because the president will nominate a prime minister from the single winning party and not someone supported by the coalition.
  • citizens will not be better off from this game.
  • the image of Romania abroad and the confidence of “doing business with Romania” will be affected.

What could be the solution to this situation? On the long run, the political class has to change and the now-young professionals must run for elected offices and win key positions in government. On the short run, it has to be a compromise made by the current political leaders who, by the way, had key government positions during communism, 20 years ago, too.

More info from BBC: Romania opposition alleges fraud in presidential poll.