ROMANIA: Mr Traian Basescu, the mayor of Bucharest, claimed yesterday that his opponent in Sunday's Romanian elections planned to rig polls to secure victory for a corrupt ruling elite that cut its teeth under the Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Daniel McLaughlin reports from Bucharest.
The presidential hopeful said the true face of the governing PSD party and its candidate, Mr Adrian Nastase, had been exposed in documents purporting to be leaked memos from their meetings, in which they allegedly plan to manipulate the media and law courts and discredit Mr Basescu.
The revelations, which Mr Nastase dismisses as fake, have sharpened an already neck-and-neck fight for the presidency of this country of 22 million, which hopes to join the European Union in 2007.
"The documents prove that the Nastase government is controlling the justice system and deciding who should be checked out by state security, and when," Mr Basescu told The Irish Times.
The former ship's captain, who is backed by the centrist Justice and Truth alliance, says the transcripts reveal PSD leaders telling prosecutors to investigate him; proposing tight controls over the media; and recording the Senate leader discussing how he rigs votes in parliament.
"Maybe the most dramatic revelation is the control of the press. When the independent media lose their rights and freedom, then the next step is society at large losing its freedom and respect," he said.
Mr Basescu, who portrays himself as a clean-cut "man of the people", is within a whisker of the slick Mr Nastase in opinion polls, and insists it is time for Romanians to finally kick out the old guard.
Mr Nastase and many of his team were in the lower ranks of Ceausescu's administration, which was toppled 15 years ago amid violent clashes and the eventual execution of the dictator on Christmas Day 1989.
"They are mostly unchanged in their mentality," said Mr Basescu in his office in central Bucharest.
"If you look at the government, they were nearly all in the Communist Party administration, and if Ceausescu was around today they would still be in power now.
"I always suspected that they thought the same way now as they did then, but these documents provide the proof."
Mr Basescu said that victory for him and his allies in Sunday's combined presidential and parliamentary election would usher in a regime which was committed to lower taxes, better services and corruption-free business and politics.
But the election itself could be rife with dirty tricks, he warned.
"We have information that the government has prepared software that will knock some 10 per cent off our vote count in electronic polling," he alleged.
The Justice and Truth Alliance had asked the authorities to allow it to conduct a parallel count to combat irregularities, but Mr Basescu was not optimistic about receiving permission.
"The Central Election Commission is controlled by the Nastase government" he said.
Mr Basescu has been criticised in many newspapers for not condemning gay marriage, which goes against the conservative grain of mostly Orthodox Romania; the church, which polls show is the country's most trusted institution, has urged its followers to back Mr Nastase.
Other than warning of moral decline, the PSD claims that Mr Basescu lacks the experience and allies capable of leading Romania into the EU.
"When I see the EU sitting at the table with Nastase, knowing that Romania is a corrupt country, I lose a little faith in the EU itself," he said.