BUCHAREST, Nov 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Romania’s pro-Europe President Klaus Iohannis has taken a big lead in the first round of the country’s
presidential election on Sunday, according to partial official results.
With votes from 90 percent of polling stations counted, Iohannis stands on
just over 36 percent, with his nearest rival, former Social Democrat (PSD)
prime minister Viorica Dancila, on 24 percent.
Iohannis claimed victory on Sunday evening in front of cheering supporters
at his campaign headquarters.
“We have beaten the Social Democrats,” the 60-year-old leader said.
“But the war is not over, we have to take another step forward in two
weeks,” he said, referring to the second round ballot on Nov 24.
A Iohannis victory would potentially add to a liberal fightback against the
region’s prevailing nationalism, following the election of an anti-corruption
activist as Slovakia’s president and a centre-left candidate as mayor of the
Hungarian capital Budapest.
Dancila meanwhile said she was “happy” with the result, adding: “We are
present in the second round, I thank those who voted with their hearts.”
The PSD has become increasingly reliant on an ageing, rural electorate and
had feared the nightmare scenario of not making it to the second round, which would have been a first in Romania’s post-communist history.
A record 650,000 votes from Romanians abroad — who tend to favour liberal candidates — will take longer to count but analysts say they will likely not be enough to knock Dancila out of the race.
The third-placed candidate, Dan Barna from the recently-formed pro-EU Save Romania Union (USR) party, is on around 13 percent.
Iohannis, who hails from the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL),
repeatedly clashed with the beleaguered PSD government, which collapsed last month.
Dancila served as the last prime minister in that government, which took
power after the PSD won parliamentary elections in 2016.
The PSD looks to have lost 16 percentage points when compared with the 2016 election.
The PSD government had engaged in a long battle with Brussels — and
Iohannis who backed the EU — over allegations it was trying to push through controversial judicial reforms in order to neuter the judiciary and benefit PSD politicians.
Iohannis had made the rule of law a central plank of his campaign.
While nationalism has been less present in Romanian politics than in
Hungary or Poland, the PSD had tried to frame its clashes with European Union institutions as evidence that the party was standing up for Romania.
The PSD’s heavy losses in the European polls added to a series of travails
for Dancila’s government which eventually saw it brought down by parliament in a no-confidence vote last month.
Iohannis, a former physics teacher and mayor of the city of Sibiu, had
warned that a PSD win would have been a threat to democracy.
The left-wing party is seen as the successor of the elite which dominated
the country before the overthrow of communism in 1989 and is accused of
harbouring corruption in its ranks.
After starting strongly early on Sunday, turnout tailed off towards the
evening and was estimated at 48 percent, compared with 52 percent five years ago.
In total 14 candidates stood in the first round, in the country of 19.7
million people. — NNN-AGENCIES
