ROMANIA: Romania's election authority yesterday rejected a centrist opposition demand to cancel Sunday's ballot because of alleged vote-counting fraud that gave the ruling formerly communist party a small lead.
The centrist alliance had said the alleged fraud had affected more than 160,000 ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections.
"We rejected the demand to cancel the parliamentary election," said Mr Emil Gherghut, president of the central electoral bureau.
With about 99 per cent of ballots counted, the ruling Social Democrats are ahead with 37 per cent of the vote, followed by the alliance with 31 per cent.
They are about 470,000 votes apart.
The alliance leader, Mr Traian Basescu, who is facing the Prime Minister, Mr Adrian Nastase, in a presidential runoff on December 12th, accused the government of stealing votes, both through multiple voting and electronic fraud.
Mr Basescu said the number of invalid votes counted had decreased instead of increasing by the end of the day on Monday, and that those missing were given to Mr Nastase and his party.
Government ministers have denied the claims and, in turn, accused the opposition of fraud.
Analysts said the opposition's claims were sufficiently valid to at least merit an investigation.
OSCE observers at the election had said that, while the process was largely "professional and efficiently organised", authorities should investigate reports of multiple voting.
The electoral bureau said any discrepancies in the vote count were just calculating mistakes that were eventually corrected and had no bearing on the final results.
It said it voted to reject the alliance demand for a rerun by 21 to five.
"There was no election fraud," said its vice-president, Mr Victor Pasca-Camenita.