page_title: 1892 Romanian general election
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: 1892 Romanian general election / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Haĭ la deal, Samurache! ("Let's you and I go uphill, pooch!"), cartoon published in Moftul Român, the Romanian satirical paper. It depicts the Conservative government forcing the reluctant Junimist faction into a subservient position. The scene takes place on Dealul Mitropoliei, Bucharest, more specifically on the slope leading up to the Romanian Assembly of Deputies; Premier Lascăr Catargiu is the master, Junimist speaker Petre P. Carp a lapdog.
context_page_description: General elections were held in the Kingdom of Romania in February–March 1892, ending in a major victory for the incumbent Conservative Party cabinet. The elections reunited the mainstream Conservatives, under Prime Minister Lascăr Catargiu, with the breakaway Junimea faction. The cabinet which organized and won the election, then governed to 1895, reunited three doyens of Romanian conservatism: Catargiu, Petre P. Carp, and Take Ionescu. All three represented the political line most favored by Carol I, King of Romania.
  The elections for both Assembly and Senate were unusually free in their historical context, but still noted for their various irregularities. The Opposition, led by the National Liberal Party, was poorly prepared for the race, having failed to reunite around a common platform.
  The years 1891–1893 witnessed the defeat and passing of a liberal founders' generation, under brothers Ion and Dimitrie Brătianu, and the ascendancy of a new party elite, under Dimitrie Sturdza. This interval was used by Carp for the advancement of various fiscal and administrative reforms, some of which were violently resisted by the middle- and lower-class population.
context_section_description: The "Conservative concentration" was unique in its era, in that it provided political stability under a Conservative cabinet—variously described as a "barely disguised Junimist government" or a Conservative coalition "on the basis of Junimist principles." Virtually unopposed in the Assembly, the Catargiu administration was able to push through Carp's reforms. This was tested immediately by the votes for Assembly and Senate Presidents, going to General Manu and G. G. Catacuzino, respectively. The Catargiu–Carp partnership ran a full term in office, to 1895—the first such Conservative cabinet since 1871, and the last one in history. According to Bacalbașa, it should be seen as "one of Romania's most competent and most civilized"—functioning so despite the mutual resentment between its two leaders. As noted by Ornea, the cabinet was primarily kept because it guaranteed the preservation of Carol's foreign policy.
  D. Brătianu, who had taken over the PNL leadership from his deceased brother, also died in June 1892, leaving the party to be run and reorganized by Sturdza. Although the Catargiu regime was unusually stable, the Opposition mustered enough support to sabotage some of Carp's laws. Carp's move to overtax rural industries and make them support administrative decentralization infuriated the populace. In April 1893, instigated by Sturdza, wagoners and artisans blocked the entrance to Parliament on Dealul Mitropoliei; by 1894, these disturbances erupted into full-blown riots in various parts of the country. Slowly turning toward ethnic and economic nationalism, especially so during the Transylvanian Memorandum affair of 1892, Sturdza put up "a sustained effort [...] to overturn the Conservative government. The next three years were by all accounts one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of Romanian political parties between the achievement of independence and the First World War."
  The PNL, meanwhile, became more open toward proposals for electoral reform, which came from the party's left-wing. In November 1892, promises for a gradual change in this area were included in the new PNL program, published at Iași. Overall, however, the PNL's leadership rejected the concept of universal suffrage, and looked into more moderate alternatives. As historian Sorin Radu argues: "the PNL was agitating for electoral reform especially when it was in the opposition, when it could promise a lot of things, but once in power it found reasons not to live up to such promises."
  The opportunity was seized in 1893 by a smaller anti-establishment group, the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR), which introduced universal suffrage among its core demands. With Morțun among its founders, the PSDMR emerged from the fusion of socialist clubs, adopting a localized variant of the Erfurt Program as its platform. Two years later, Dobrescu-Argeș also set up his very own "Peasants' Party", the first entirely agrarian political group in Romanian history, and significant for opposing both the National Liberals and the Conservatives.
caption: Haĭ la deal, Samurache! ("Let's you and I go uphill, pooch!"), Constantin Jiquidi cartoon published in Moftul Român on March 16, 1893. Premier Lascăr Catargiu as the master, Junimist speaker Petre P. Carp as his lapdog, pulled up the slope of Dealul Mitropoliei to support the government.
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