An earthquake in Romania

For once the shock horror headline at the BBC is justified. The first round of the Romanian presidential election on Sunday was a total surprise, completely unheralded by the polls, and it’s a very bad omen for the country’s future.

Romania has a semi-presidential system (not unlike France), and in the early part of its democratic era it used to hold presidential and parliamentary elections together. But in 2004 the presidential term was extended to five years while the parliamentary term remained at four, so since then they have been out of alignment – until this year, when, five times four being equal to four times five, they briefly coincide again.

So the presidential first round on Sunday will be followed by the parliamentary election next Sunday, and then a week later, on 8 December, the second round of the presidential election. The runoff will pit far-right independent Călin Georgescu against liberal Elena Lasconi; the winner will succeed incumbent Klaus Iohannis, who is retiring due to term limits.

Like neighboring Bulgaria, Romanian politics is divided not just ideologically but between reformists and a corrupt establishment. The two traditional major parties are the Social Democrats (centre-left) and the National Liberals (centre-right). Iohannis is aligned with the National Liberals, but the two now govern in coalition with Social Democrat leader Marcel Ciolacu as prime minister.

The Social Democrats ran Ciolacu for president, while the National Liberals ran their leader, former prime minister Nicolae Ciucă. Against them were Lasconi, from the liberal-reformist Save Romania Union; George Simion, leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians; two other prominent reformists, Mircea Geoană and Cristian Diaconescu, both former Social Democrats running as independents; Hunor Kelemen, representing the ethnic Hungarian minority; and half a dozen (it was thought) also-rans.*

The opinion polls had consistently put Ciolacu in the lead, with a close contest between Ciucă, Simion and Lasconi as to who would face him in the runoff. Only in the last couple of weeks did they start to show a surge for the previously neglected Georgescu, who left the mainstream far right two years ago and is even more strongly pro-Russian and anti-European.

But he is evidently seen as a cleanskin and, plagued by corruption and economic malaise, that’s what voters are looking for. He collected 22.9% of the vote, almost 350,000 votes clear of Lasconi on 19.2%. She in turn just edged out Ciolacu (19.1%) by a margin of 2,740 votes; Ciolacu was ahead of her for most of the count, but the late votes from Bucharest were just enough to put her in the lead. Simion was fourth on 13.9%, followed well back by Ciucă on 8.8% and Geoană 6.3%. (See official results here.)

Despite Georgescu’s come-from-nowhere performance, the combined far-right vote is still below 40%. If the democratic parties rally to Lasconi she should be able to win comfortably. But there are serious doubts as to how many of the establishment’s voters will do so. (Ciucă has endorsed Lasconi for the runoff, but apparently Ciolacu so far has not; Simion, unsurprisingly, has endorsed Georgescu.) As the BBC report comments, “many supporters of the Social Democrats, especially in rural areas, would find it difficult to support such a liberal, progressive figure.”

If Georgescu becomes president it’s not clear what sort of coalition he will be able to assemble in parliament. At the last election, in 2020, the Social Democrats led with 28.9% of the vote and 110 of the 330 lower house seats. The National Liberals (25.2%) won 93, followed by the Save Romania Union (15.4%) on 55, the far right (9.1%) 33 and the Hungarians (5.7%) 21. (The remaining 18 seats represent small ethnic minorities.)

Recent polling shows the Social Democrats and the reformists roughly maintaining their support, with the far right making major gains mostly at the expense of the National Liberals. But with the embarrassing failure of the polls in the presidential election, it would be unwise to place much reliance on that. And for the reformists to co-operate with the establishment on the latter’s terms would just risk increasing the voter alienation that drives the swing to the far right.

It’s possible that this result will be the wake-up call that Romania’s politicians need, and that they will construct some sort of united front to preserve a democratic and pro-European orientation. But it seems at least equally likely that they will continue their infighting and end by giving Vladimir Putin another Balkan ally.

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* There were actually 14 on the ballot paper; former prime minister Ludovic Orban withdrew at the last minute and endorsed Lasconi. He recorded 0.2% of the vote, beating three genuine candidates.