From: mitrache@gringo.usc.edu (Traian Mitrache)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.romanian
Subject: Elections
Date: 27 Sep 1992 16:00:18 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: gringo.usc.edu


From clari.news.hot.east-europe.:

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	BUCHAREST, Romania (UPI) -- Beleaguered President Ion Iliescu defied
predictions of a tight race to take a substantial lead over his closest
rival in Sunday's presidential elections, but appeared to lack an
outright win that would eliminate a runoff vote, exit polls said.
	Meanwhile in simultaneous parliamentary elections, the vote was split
and analysts said that would make a coalition government inevitable.
	Romania's electorate of 16.4 million had six presidential candidates
to choose from. Iliescu, president since the bloody overthrow of
Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, has seen his popularity
plummet since he came to office in the first free elections in May 1990.
	The 62-year-old former communist, once considered the hero of the
revolution, collared an overwhelming 83 percent of the vote in 1990. But
pre-election forecasts said his National Salvation Front faced a tough
race.
	Initial exit polls broadcast on state television two minutes after
the polls officially closed said Iliescu had 48 percent of the vote. A
candidate needed to gain more than 50 percent in the first round to win
outright and avoid a runoff vote in two weeks.
	Iliescu's main rival, geology professor Emil Constantinescu, received
33 percent of the vote, according to the exit polls. Constantinescu, 53,
heads the 17-party center-right alliance of the Democratic Convention,
which formed last December and won large gains in the February local
elections.
	Constantinescu had promised to end the ``moral misery'' facing
Romania's 23 million people with more radical reforms, but did not make
clear how he would fund such a program.
	Ultra-nationalist candidate Gheorghe Funar polled 10 percent, while
in the parliamentary race, nationalist parties got 12.5 percent of the
vote.
	Romanians were choosing from among 84 parties to fill the 328 seats
in the lower Chamber of Deputies and 143 seats in the Senate.
	The exit poll put the left-wing Democratic National Salvation Front 4
1/2 percentage points ahead of the 17-party, center-right alliance of the
Democratic Convention. Analysts said that made a coalition government
inevitable.
	The results contradicted forecasts the presidential race would be
close and that the Democratic Convention would win most seats in
parliament.
	Ion Ratiu, a leader of the National Peasant Christian Democratic
Party, the lynchpin of the Democratic Convention, said the initial
results were ``exactly as I feared ... Constantinescu is not able to
project the necessary charisma to gain the support of the party.''
	Asked about a new four-year Iliescu term in office, he said, ``it
will be a hard struggle for democracy.''
	While Iliescu argues that his cautious rule has spared Romania the
tragedies engulfing the neighboring Yugoslav republics and Moldova, his
critics point to his communist past and the disastrous Romanian economy,
which is struggling with 200 percent inflation and 8 percent
unemployment.
	Meanwhile, international observers monitoring the vote praised local
authorities.
	``They have been well organized. We have had good cooperation with
the military and police, and have seen nothing we could call
irregularities,'' said Jack Buechner, president of the International
Republican Institute.


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mitrache@gringo.usc.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.romanian