A Far-right party became the main opposition in Romania's parliament yesterday, with at least one poll saying its leader could win the second-round vote for president.
The Central Electoral Bureau said, after counting returns from 75 per cent of polling stations in Sunday's elections, that former president, Mr Ion Iliescu, a former communist, had 37 per cent of the presidential vote.
Mr Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a poet and publisher known for anti-Semitic and anti-Hungarian remarks, had 28 per cent, the bureau said.
The figures showed that Mr Iliescu's Party of Social Democracy (PDSR) of ex-communists received 37 per cent of the vote for the lower chamber of parliament, while Mr Tudor's Greater Romania Party (PRM) stood on 20 per cent.
PDSR had 38 per cent in the senate against 21 for PRM, which came from almost nothing in a local election in June to knock out centrists and liberals who ruled Romania for the last four years and become the second largest political group in parliament.
One of the biggest local polling organisations, IMAS, said Mr Tudor could squeak ahead of Mr Iliescu in the second round for president on December 10th.
Mr Tudor appeals primarily to the masses of destitute people, hit by restructuring and sell-offs of the state industries. Mr Alin Teodorescu, head of IMAS, told Reuters that the latest polling for the second round gave Mr Tudor 54 per cent of the vote, as against 46 per cent for Mr Iliescu. "I would be very surprised if Tudor did not win," he said.
Another polling organisation, Metro Media Transylvania, said its findings, based on incomplete results, showed Mr Iliescu winning the second round by a slim majority.
"Iliescu will win the second round because people may be amused by clowns but in the end they never vote clowns to office," said Metro Media director Mr Vasile Dancu.
"Tudor's first-round score was like a warning for the whole political class, coming mainly from young voters," he added.
The showing for Mr Tudor whose party got only 2.2 per cent of the vote nationally in local elections in June, was even stronger than exit polls which gave him about 27 per cent.