PSDR leader Ion Iliescu lost the final round of voting for the presidency to the DC candidate, geology professor Emil Contantinescu by 46% to 54%. This is the first time Romania's head of state has been voted out. In his campaign Iliescu had claimed the opposition would reinstate the monarchy, close down large factories and threaten national unity by including ethnic Hungarians in the government. All the main parties were actually offering much the same in terms of economic and foreign policies: further market reform, privatisation, an anti-corruption drive and speedy entry into the EU and NATO. The PSDR's fall is historic. How should those committed to pluralism, tolerance and socialism feel about the electoral defeat of an avowedly 'socialist' party? The answer is: relieved. The influence of one of the main forces fostering ethnic nationalist tensions in the region, a party of conservative, post-Stalinist bureaucrats reluctant to democratise, appears to be waning. Ion Iliescu and his party are less bloodthi
rsty but still close political relatives of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian Socialist Party.
Romania has substantial and diverse minorities. The largest are the Gypsies and the Hungarians of Transylvania. There are also Bulgars, Russians, Ukrainians, Turks and a residue of 'Saxon' Germans and Jews. The 'national communist' dictators, Ceaucescu and his predecessor and mentor Gheorghe Gheorghui-Dej (who ruled from 1952 to 1965), forged and ruthlessly utilised a homogenising nationalist ideology and state apparatus. Ceaucescu's propaganda emphasised the mythical 'Dacian-Roman' identity of the Romanian people and the state's mono-cultural Romanian character. The Romanian people's supposed 'Latin' character - and links to the greatness of the Roman Empire - were a favourite theme (Communist-era statues of Roman figures dot the urban landscape). The Hungarian minority (8% of the population, mostly in Transylvania) was portrayed as a disloyal 'fifth column', discriminated against in education and jobs, stripped of cultural and linguistic rights, and subject to forcible assimilation.
The December 1989 revolution began in Timisoara when Romanians spontaneously joined the Hungarian crowds attempting to stop the detention of dissident cleric Laslo Tokes. An intra-party coup was carried out (probably under preparation for some time) by leading figures in the regime who did not want to go down with Ceaucescu. The National Salvation Front was formed and declared itself a caretaker government until elections, with Iliescu (a one-time Ceaucescu aide who had fallen from favour) as the main spokesperson.
The massed ranks of ex-party bureaucrats who rallied to join the NSF monopolised all state institutions, and in the absence of any independent civil society, the NSF maintained control of the country with ease. Its regime utilised many of Ceaucescu's tools of power. The Securitate was kept more or less intact, just re-named. One-party control of TV, though not the press, was effectively maintained and used to smear opponents. The NSF soon resorted to the most easily available means of securing popular support: mobilising Romanian nationalism. In response to pressure from Transylvania's Hungarians for basic rights, the NSF emphasised the mono-ethnic Romanian character of the state, damned its opponents as 'enemies of Romania' and accused the Transylvania Hungarians of seeking unity with Hungary.
In the September 1992 national elections Iliescu easily beat the main opposition candidate, Contantinescu, in the run-off for the presidency, but his party - which won 27.7% of the parliamentary vote - needed outside help to govern. After two months of deadlock it formed a minority government supported by ultra-nationalist (anti-Hungarian and anti-Semitic) parties who had secured a 10% vote. A government re-shuffle in August 1994 saw the ultra-nationalists given cabinet posts and in January 1995 they signed a pact with the Government.
The Government promised a 'social-market economy'. Privatisation was slower than in the rest of Eastern Europe. The private sector is concentrated in agriculture, retailing and trade. A high proportion of the industrial sector remained in state hands. Corruption became rife at every level with the emergence of a small and very rich business elite with personal ties to the ruling party.
In the local elections in June 1996 the PSDR lost virtually every large city and town, including Bucharest, and performed poorly in the countryside, its stronghold. Just prior to the national elections the PSDR broke its pact with the ultra-nationalists and threw them out of the cabinet.
Living standards are comparable to Latin America. With little foreign debt but few internationally competitive industries, negligible foreign investment and 50% of the population still in the countryside, Romania's people would be best served by a policy concentrating on modernising agriculture and redirecting industry towards providing capital inputs to farmers and light consumer goods to domestic consumers. It is vital that any government, of left or right, eschews the ethnic nationalist card and follows the example of neighbouring Moldova, where Romanians are the main ethnic group and the government has implemented policies that ensure the linguistic and cultural rights of minorities.
