The Central Electoral Bureau announced that 56.52 per cent of the electorate went to the polls yesterday for the parliamentary and presidential elections in Romania. This brings down by 20 per cent the number of people that went to the polls as against the figures and percentages of the general elections of 1996. The final results will be known in the first days of December.
Margin of error is of one to one and a half per cent.
We now bring you excerpts of statements of the first two contenders, Ion Iliescu and Corneliu Vadim who will fight for the position in the second ballot, on 10 December. We are particularly interested, as part of our general policy structure, to integrate our country in the Euro - Atlantic organizations. We are too poor to celebrate properly, everybody is poor in this country and there is no time for celebrations. Actually I work all the time for the magazines which I am editing, as this is my only source of income. I welcome the opportunity to have the televized dialogues with Mr. Ion Iliescu as I intend to point out to him the catastrophic results of his previous offices during seven years and the mafia which he protected.