Romania is facing a runoff for the presidency after Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s first-round win was not enough to bring him outright victory.
With nearly all ballots counted, Social Democrat Ponta, 42, garnered 40.3 percent in Sunday’s vote, beating Liberal Party leader Klaus Johannis, who received 30.4 percent. The results were announced with 98.3 percent of poling stations counted and broadly reflected exit polls released on Sunday evening.
The candidates will square off in a final round on Nov. 16.
Photo: Reuters
Citizens of the second-poorest EU member are picking a new president who will have the right to appoint prosecutors and judges, command the army and set foreign policy for five years. Ponta’s promises to improve living standards through higher wages and pensions helped him overcome graft and spy scandals that overshadowed the election campaign.
“The battle in the final round will be pretty tight,” Cristian Ghinea, head of the Romanian Center of European Policies, said on Sunday by phone. “Johannis can still make up the difference. If before today I’d have bet on a Ponta landslide, now I’m not so sure.”
Former Romanian prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu, a Ponta ally, was third with 5.4 percent. Elena Udrea, who is backed by Romanian President Traian Basescu, garnered 5.2 percent and Monica Macovei, a former European Parliament lawmaker and anti-corruption advocate, got 4.5 percent. The results are with 91.3 percent of votes counted.
Ponta is set to win the second round of the election in two weeks, according to a survey of 1,124 people by the IRES on Oct. 23. Sunday’s turnout was 53.1 percent, the Electoral Bureau said.
Voters at the Romanian embassy in Paris tried to force their way into the building to vote having waited for hours in line unsuccessfully, Electoral Bureau spokesman Marian Muhulet told a televised news conference. Queues were still visible in Vienna and London after polling closed, the private B1 TV station reported.
“It was a violation of our constitutional right to vote,” Andrada Voinitchi said by e-mail after lining up for three-and-a-half hours in the UK capital. “I’d taken the time to read about each candidate and cast my vote as an informed decision. Unfortunately I was never able to.”
Ponta, the last candidate to speak after the exit polls were released, said he would nominate his preferred replacement today following talks with the ruling coalition and Tariceanu. He added that he would spend the next two weeks seeking to lure Romanians who voted for the 12 candidates excluded from the runoff.
“Starting this winter, Romania will become a truly democratic country, a European country,” Ponta said earlier, after casting his vote in Bucharest. “After 10 years of fighting and destruction the time has come to rebuild.”
Ponta maintained his lead even as his allies were implicated in a corruption probe into the purchase of US$105 million of Microsoft Office licenses for schools. While he pledged nothing could block the investigation, the Ponta-controlled parliament postponed a decision on lifting two Social Democratic lawmakers’ immunity until after the presidential election. All parties involved deny wrongdoing.
Johannis, an ethnic German who is mayor of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu, European Capital of Culture in 2007, pledged to stand up for Romania’s court system.
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