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Author Topic: Romanian Elections
DrConway
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Babbler # 490

posted 29 November 2004 01:34 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Romania's Social Democrats lead in general election

quote:
BUCHAREST, Nov. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said his Social Democratic Party (PSD) is winning Sunday's parliamentary elections and that it is looking forward to negotiations to form a coalition government.

"It looks like our victory. But we must wait until the final results are released," he said after polls closed at 1900 GMT.

Exit polls showed that the ruling PSD pocketed about 40 percent of the vote, a modestly better performance than in 2000. But it still lacks the majority to form a government by itself.



From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
NDP Newbie
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Babbler # 5089

posted 29 November 2004 02:37 AM      Profile for NDP Newbie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Romanian's are lucky politics-wise nowadays: Their right-wing parties are so repulsive that only the left and the centrist coalitions are viable choices.

This is a loss for the left relative to last election, but only because of the emergence of a credible non-fascist opposition.

Either coalitions seems capable of continuing to raise the standard of living in Romania (as the socialist-humanist left-wing coalition has over the past 5 years) and draw it increasingly close to Europe.

[ 29 November 2004: Message edited by: NDP Newbie ]


From: Cornwall, ON | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pellaken1
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posted 29 November 2004 01:08 PM      Profile for Pellaken1     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
lets hope the PSD is not a Yanukovich-like party, and we dont have another tear in the civil fabric of another former eastern european nation. They are all making the decision or the EU vs some kind of new USSR.
From: Gritland | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
Pellaken1
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posted 29 November 2004 01:11 PM      Profile for Pellaken1     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
ok

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1064735.stm

dont sound that bad then


From: Gritland | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
NDP Newbie
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posted 29 November 2004 11:17 PM      Profile for NDP Newbie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The PSD/Humanist left-wing coalition has seen rapid economic growth over the past few years, but has been dogged by accusations of corruption and graft (Sounds like the U.S. Democrats circa 1952...lol). Additionally, there have supposedly been mild human rights violations, but Freedom House still considers Romania a free country, with ratings in both civil and political liberties comparable to Taiwan in its current multi-partisan era. These violations don't surprise me at all, as the PSD still has the odd Stalinist-era knuckle-dragger in toe.

Urban voters voted for the centrist opposition coalition due to the popularity of Bucharest's mayor, its Presidential candidate, along with a desire for rapid economic reform (Read: Privatisation. Though I imagine Romania would still have a public sector larger than even Bev Meslo would find fathomable.).

Rural voters, concerned that liberalisation would further increase the gap betwween the rural and urban standard of living, stayed with the left.

(This phenomenon was also evident in India's recent election, where the BJP's coalition of affluent middle-class urbanites and religious fundamentalists (A seemingly contradictory alliance which led to such oddities as a coalition that included both avowedly anti-religion libertarian parties and parties with ties to fascist Hindutva groups implicated in the massacres of Muslims in Bombay and in othe rparts of India.) was ousted by impoverished rural voters in favour of a coalition consisting of the benignly authoritarian and centre-left Indian National Congress, the social-democratic Samajwadi Party, and a couple of communist self-described Marxist-Leninist parties.)

The neo-Nazi Greater Romania party fell from over 20% support to the near-single digits, which is key to the development of Romania's democratic system as it's allowing for the rise of a viable centrist coalition that will keep the left on its toes. (Interstingly, the centrists seem to be more gay-friendly than the leftists, which may have added add cosmopolitan flair that helped them in the cities but hurt them rurally. Though one wonders about the mindset of a gay-unfriendly policy that claims to he Humanist, given that every other humanist party I've seen is an extremely secular and socially liberal party whose main differences from the NDP or your typical Scandisocialist party lies in the rhetoric rather than the policies.)

[ 29 November 2004: Message edited by: NDP Newbie ]


From: Cornwall, ON | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged

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