It’s election time people. Sunday is the big day. A general election.
Traian Ungureanu, former BBC Romania man and cheerleader-in-chief for Traian Basescu, unsurprisingly nails his flag to the PD-L mast (the PD-L is Basescu’s party) in this morning’s Cotidianul. No surprises there.
We at Bucharest Life do not have the vote. Though we live here and pay a fortune in taxes we are not allowed to vote, not being Romanians. But if we did, how would we vote?
Answer: we wouldn’t. And here’s why…
An election should be about one thing: people getting out and voting for their preferred candidate, and the candidate with the most votes winning. That will not happen in Romania on Sunday. As we have already reported, the candidate taking the most votes in a constituency will not always win the seat.
This is intolerable, and when ordinary people wake up on Monday morning to discover that they voted for a candidtae who won the vote but not the seat, expect trouble. Not French style rioting, oh no, that would be too much to ask for: Romanians are a passive lot (for more on the subject read Steve Sampson’s seminal work Why the Mamaliga Doesn’t Melt) but there will certainly be much muttering in offices, on the bus, in the metro.
A nation is about to be right royally conned.
Our prediction, based on latest opinion polls, is that the PSD will be the largest party (and promising to reduce taxes to 10 per cent is not a bad headline manifesto pledge), followed by the PD-L. This is important: Basescu names the prime minister who will be asked to form a government. He will be obliged to name the leader of the largest party to do so (in this case Mircea Geoana), meaning that he will not be able to name his stooge, Theodor Stolojan, of the PD-L.
Whether Geoana will be able to form a government remains to be seen. Expect weeks of horse-trading.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh and I think it’s “Why the Mamaliga doesn’t explode” … can you point a link to his article please?
Actually Basescu is obliged to name the PM from the winning party only if the winning party gets 50% + 1 of all votes. Otherwise he can name whoever he wants.
I’d like Basescu to name Stolojan as PM, the Parliament to not accept his nomination, suspend Basescu for a month and put an interim President that would name a “desired” PM
Otherwise I’m voting for PSD and I hope they win. Even if they’re corrupt, they proved that they can run the country with iron hand and they deserve to be the leading party. I don’t care if they take for themselves if they do something for the other people too. As in that old Romanian saying “cine imparte, parte isi face” (the one who splits the gifts keeps something for himself too or so…)