FORMER COMMUNISTS and liberals are vying for victory in tomorrow’s Romanian general election, but neither looks capable of forming a strong and stable government at a time of mounting economic difficulty.
Opinion polls put the leftist Social Democrats (PSD) and the centrist Liberal Democrats (PDL) neck-and-neck with more than 30 per cent of support, about 10 points clear of the right-wing Liberal Party (PNL) of prime minister Calin Tariceanu, who looks unlikely to keep his job after the vote.
Mr Tariceanu teamed up with the PDL and with President Train Basescu to oust the PSD in the last elections in 2004, ending its dominance of Romanian politics.
That dominance began when the party formed around the communist leaders who helped to oust dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in a 1989 revolution.
Their surprise election victory soon turned sour, however.
The relationship between Mr Tariceanu and Mr Basescu crumbled alongside that of the PDL and PNL, reforms slowed down, the country’s anti-corruption drive lost momentum and parliament became embroiled in interminable squabbles.
The in-fighting damaged the urbane Mr Tariceanu far more than Mr Basescu, a pugnacious former sea captain who now ranks as the country’s most popular politician, while the ratings for Mr Tariceanu and his party plummeted before enjoying a slight recovery in recent weeks.
As the liberal coalition collapsed in acrimony, the PSD set about recovering its position as the pre-eminent party in conservative rural and provincial Romania, where it was long seen as the traditional party of power.
It received strong support from another establishment institution, the Orthodox Church.
Under Mircea Geoana (50), a former foreign minister and ambassador to Washington, the PSD benefited from the scrap between Mr Tariceanu and Mr Basescu, and more recently from their initial failure to acknowledge the severity of the world financial crisis and then their lack of clear policies to deal with it.
While all the main parties have pledged to spend their way out of the crisis with fiscal stimulus programmes, the PSD’s lavish promises to tax the rich, boost social spending and increase the minimum wage – all during a predicted economic slowdown – have seen its popularity soar among poor Romanians.
The inevitable post-election coalition talks will be complicated by the antipathy between the main parties and the fact that Mr Basescu will choose the next prime minister – his dislike of both Mr Tariceanu and Mr Geoana is well-known.