Stark choices in Romanian election

BUCHAREST, Romania -- Romanians are voting in a presidential election that presents a stark choice between a former leftist and an ultra-nationalist whose rhetoric has outraged minority groups.

Former President Ion Iliescu, 70, Romania's first post-communist president from 1990 until 1996 when he was defeated by centrists, is favoured to beat flamboyant 51-year-old publisher Corneliu Vadim Tudor in the run-off poll.

Tudor, whose newspapers publish barbs offensive to Jews, Gypsies and the Eastern European country's large ethnic Hungarian minority, had streaked from nowhere in opinion polls to take 28 percent in the first round to Iliescu's 36 percent.

Final opinion polls published last week at the end of a mostly lacklustre campaign with no televised debates gave Iliescu about 70 percent of the vote to Tudor's 30 percent.

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But analysts noted that opinion polls before the first round between 12 candidates on November 26 had shown support for Tudor was almost non-existent.

Around 17.7 million Romanians are eligible to vote in Sunday's run-off - which was required after no candidate secured 50 percent support in the first round -- with the first official tallies expected early on Monday.

Mircea Mihalache, a 22-year-old medical student, said he had voted for Iliescu out of "necessity."

"Even in my worst nightmare, I've never imagined that one day I will have to vote for a communist (Iliescu). But today it seems that we have no other option but to choose the lesser evil. We can't let an extremist come to power," he said.

Tudor is feeding on a rich vein of anger in this country, which is ranked last in most social and economic categories among the 12 candidate countries for EU membership.

Economist Daniel Daianu said a vote for Tudor and his Greater Romania party Romania Mare expressed a lot of disappointment and frustration.

"My assumption is that if the economy perks up and we have a growth rate of four percent... we'll have a change in the mood."

A former "court poet" to communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu -- assassinated along with his wife Elena on Christmas Day, 1989, in East Europe's bloodiest coup -- Tudor relishes the limelight.

He has made the most of interviews and television appearances to push messages of imposing a "dictatorship of law."

Recently however he has sought to soften his image, pledging to follow the path of integration into NATO and the European Union and expressing regret for anti-Semitic writings and diatribes.

The World Jewish Congress has urged Romanians not to elect Tudor president, saying if he becomes head of state it would oppose Bucharest's efforts to join the EU.

Tudor's rhetoric has brought Iliescu, a former communist whose 1990-1996 rule was faulted for corruption and failed reforms, some reluctant supporters.

"I feel sick at heart but I must vote, why?," said Doina Cornea, 71, the doyenne of Romania's anti-communist movement, who strongly opposed Ceausescu and later Iliescu.

"Iliescu represents no guarantees for me, but I understand that in the West he is being given more credibility than the other."

Iliescu has made the most of the opportunity to paint the vote as a stark choice between pro-Western reformers and forces that would march Romania straight backwards and has benefited from positive media coverage, even from sources not usually enamoured of the Soviet-educated engineer.

On the eve of Sunday's election, the Daily Jurnalul National said in an editorial. "Never in this decade has the country been at such a crossroads as it will be when Romania has to choose between a destiny of isolation and extremism and one of integration in Europe."

Warning that extremism could provoke unrest, Romania's national television on Friday aired a 1970s film showing the violence of the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist movement that rose to power in 1940.

The film ended with the main character appealing to the audience "to stop the plague of extremism."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Ex-president Iliescu leads Romanian poll
November 27, 2000
Stabbing mars Romanian election
November 24, 2000

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