Romanian left-wingers gathered in cold sunshine to light candles and place flowers on the grave of the late dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, during a Christmas Day vigil on Saturday, 10 years after his execution by firing squad.
"This man died with dignity next to his wife, good or evil as she may have been. He should have been buried next to her," Mr Gherghina Dima, a senior member of the Socialist Party of Labour (PSM), told the crowd.
Ceausescu and his politically powerful wife, Elena, were summarily tried by an improvised military court, sentenced to death and executed on Christmas Day 1989, during eastern Europe's most violent anti-Communist revolution.
Romania is due to hold parliamentary and presidential elections next year. Opinion surveys show the ruling centrists trailing far behind the left-wing grouping led by the former president, Mr Ion Iliescu, who lost elections three years ago.