28 November 2004
12 December 2004 2009 → 51.23% 48.77% | 5,126,794 4,881,520 Start date 2004 | |
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Winner Traian Băsescu | ||
General election were held in Romania on 28 November 2004, with a second round of the presidential election on 12 December between Prime Minister Adrian Năstase of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSD) and Bucharest Mayor Traian Băsescu of the opposition Justice and Truth Alliance. Băsescu was elected President by a narrow majority of just 51.2%.
Contents
Following 2003 amendments to the constitution which lengthened the presidential term to five years, these were the last joint elections to the presidency and Parliament.
Parliamentary elections
The main contenders were the left-wing alliance made up of the incumbent Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSD) and the Romanian Humanist Party (PUR), and, on the other hand, the center-right "Justice and Truth" alliance (Dreptate şi adevăr) comprising the liberal National Liberal Party (Romania) and the reformist Democratic Party (Romania).
Other significant contenders were the Greater Romania Party (PRM) (right-wing nationalists), the ethnic Hungarian party Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), and the Union for Romanian Reconstruction, a group of right-wing technocrats.
Conduct
The opposition alleged fraudulent use by the PSD of "supplementary lists", designed to help Romanians in transit to vote. Traditionally, Romanians voted with a cardboard identity card, which was stamped when they voted. Most Romanians now have laminated plastic IDs, to which a printed stamp is affixed when a person votes. However, the stamps can be easily removed.
The opposition claimed that there were organized "electoral excursions" of PSD supporters who were bussed to various towns to vote several times. This was corroborated by several teams of journalists, who followed the buses.
The Romanian opposition announced on 30 November that they were demanding a re-run of the election, because some of the void votes were allegedly awarded to the PSD. They showed evidence that some people voted more than once (they found about 750 persons in three counties, but their search of the supplementary lists would continue) and also showed that many of the minutes of the electoral committees were wrongly completed (the sum of the number of valid votes and null votes did not match the number of voters, sometimes by a difference of hundreds or thousands of votes) and the central software not only allowed these contradictory figures, but it also added these differences by default to the PSD. The opposition announced that it had started a parallel count, which showed a PSD-DA difference of only 2% between.
The government attacked the opposition by arguing that 'rumours of fraud' affect Romania's economy and its external credibility.
In January 2005, the IMAS institute of statistics released an analysis of the voting results in the 16,824 precincts. In the top 1,000 precincts with the most votes on the supplementary lists, the PSD had 43% to the DA's 23%, while in the precincts with least votes on supplementary lists, the PSD had 30% to the DA's 34%. The same trend was true in the precincts with most void votes.[1]
Aftermath
On 13 December, the PUR president Dan Voiculescu hinted that they have more in common with the DA (both have a center-right orientation) and that they might break from the PSD, but one day later said that he would remain with PSD. It has been suggested by the press that this could be result of a blackmail about his communist past. By 25 December both UDMR and PUR signed a protocol of alliance with DA (Justice and Truth), with the designated prime minister being Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu. Thus, the PSD was left in opposition while Justice and Truth, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania and the Humanist Party (now the Conservative Party) formed the government.