$Unique_ID{bob00438} $Pretitle{} $Title{Romania The First Free Elections} $Subtitle{} $Author{V. Lucretia, G.H. Calin} $Affiliation{News Agency Rompres} $Subject{parliament party ion election national romania romanian first iliescu political see tables } $Date{1990} $Log{See Table 1.*0043801.tab } Title: Romania Book: Romania December 1989-December 1990 Author: V. Lucretia, G.H. Calin Affiliation: News Agency Rompres Date: 1990 The First Free Elections On March 14, 1990 the Provisional National Unity Council passed the election bill for the holding of elections on May 20. The procedure of organization and development of free elections, the first after more than half a century of dictatorial regimes, was regulated in the PNUC decree-law no. 92/1990. Accordingly, parliament was to have a bicameral structure - a lower and an upper house that is the Assembly of Deputies and the Senate. Both Parliament and the President were to be elected by freely expressed universal, equal, direct and secret ballot. The Romanian government committed itself to the holding of free elections and welcomed the presence here of foreign observers - about 550 important guests, representing international and nongovernmental organizations like the Council of Europe, the European Assembly, the Human Rights Helsinki International Foundation, the US Commission on European Security and Cooperation, the US Institute of Republicans and Democrats for International Relations, the Foundation of Electoral Systems, as well as delegations of the White House and the Villages Roumaines. Moreover, 1,500 foreign press correspondents also came here for the elections. In keeping with the election Law provisions, on March 20 the election campaign was inaugurated nationwide. 213 election rallies and 473 election meetings were held in Bucharest and in the country. The atmosphere was calm, democratic, no important incidents occurred. Yet police records mentioned a number of blamable incidents, especially on the occasion of rallies held without legal approval, in which participants, contrary to the dispositions contained in the election Law incited to violence, intimidation and slandering of the political adversary. The election campaign was extensively featured in the media (over 1,000 newspapers and publications radio and tv programmes). Representatives of 54 parties and 62 independent candidates benefitted by free-of-charge tv appearances for a total 3,640 minutes. According to data supplied by the Central Election Office, 14,826,616 voters or 86.20% of a total 17,200,722 that had their names in election rolls cast their vote for the presidential nominees. 12,232,498 votes or 85.07% were cast for the NSF nominee, Ion Iliescu. 1,529,188 votes or 10.64% were cast for Radu Campeanu who ran on the NLP ticket. 618,007 votes or 4.29% were for the nominee of the Christian-Democratic National Peasant Party, Ion Ratiu. The election returns for the Assembly of Deputies were as follows: the National Salvation Front - 66.31% votes the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania - 7.23% the National Liberal Party - 6.41% the Ecologist Movement - 2.62% the Christian-Democratic National Peasant Party - 2.56% the Agrarian Democratic Party - 1.83% the Romanian Ecologist Party - 1.69% the Romanian Socialist Democratic Party - 1.05%. The other parties' vote performance was below 1%. The election returns for the Senate revealed that 67.02% of voters cast their ballot for National Salvation Front candidates 7.12% for those of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania 7.06% for NLP candidates 2.50% for candidates of the Christian-Democratic National Peasant Party 2.45% for the Ecologist Movement 2.15% for the Romanians' National Unity Party 1.59% for the Agrarian Democratic Party 1.38% for the Romanian Ecologist Party and 1.10% for the Socialist Democratic Party. Calm, order and equilibrium were the major traits of the climate that pervaded the holding and development of the elections - the first step toward institution of democracy in Romania. Collective responsibility for a fundamental choice which should not be compromised before our people and the international public prevailed over divergent opinions and intolerance. As the large majority of observers noted, the organizations system was rather cumbersome which caused agglomeration, delays and sometimes, irregularities such minor incidents, however, did not alter the election returns to any significant extent, the majority of voters expressing their clear option for Ion Iliescu and the National Salvation Front. The leader of the French National Assembly delegation, Mr. Andre Billardon, Vice President of the Assembly showed that knowledge of Romanian realities consolidated his feeling that the revolutionary change was irreversible and that the Romanians would by themselves solve the problems that were left pending. He also showed that it was the Romanians who made their choice on May 20. In his turn, Mr. Gerlad Patrick Pratt, chief of the British Home Office department for election affairs said that in their opinion the elections were free and fair. They remarked the voting procedure and the impressive voter turnout. ROMANIA'S PRESIDENT The Higher Court of Justice, in its plenum, unanimously validated the election of Mr. Ion Iliescu as president of Romania under ruling No. 1 of June 7. Romania's president was elected directly by the people. The election by the people had the advantage of designating a president who, through his very status, does not belong to any political party, being a neutral body through the agency of whom the balance of power in the state is ensured. Thus we have observed the ideals of the Romanian people's revolution. INAUGURATION CEREMONY The joint session of the two chambers of Parliament for the swearing in of Romania's president was held on June 20, 1990. "I swear to be faithful to the Romanian people, to their ideals of freedom and prosperity". "I swear to observe the country's laws, to safeguard democracy, the fundamental human rights and freedoms, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the homeland". Ion Iliescu Ion Iliescu was born on March 3, 1930, at Oltenita, to a family of railway workers. His father, one of the leaders of the interwar working-class movement, was expelled from the Romanian Communist Party in 1944 after dissensions with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Educated in a worker milieu, where aspirations after freedom, democracy and better living conditions were linked to socialist promises, young Ion Iliescu became a member of the Union of Communist Youth in 1944. He enrolled in primary school in Oltenita and finished it in Bucharest. In 1944 he was admitted to the "Polizu" industrial lyceum, then he attended the "Spiru Haret" lyceum and he graduated from the "Sf. Sava" lyceum. Owing to his fine school achievement he was promoted to the leadership of the Pupils Union and then of the Union of Communist Youth. He engaged in further education, first in the Polytechnic in Bucharest and then at the Power Engineering Institute in Moscow (the water-power-engineering department). In 1955 he got a job as designing engineer with the Power Studies and Design Institute (ISPE). Despite his position and posts in communist-type organisations, he continued to act according to his own beliefs in democracy and freedom of thought and of expression. As by mid-1960s Romania had opened to the West, economic updating and independence from the USSR, the communist party started to allow experts and managerially competent people to take part in economic, social and political decisionmaking. In that context, Ion Iliescu was elected first secretary of the UCY Minister for youth affairs at a time when Europe as a whole was tormented by youth movements (1967), Ion Iliescu managed to meet most of the Romanian youth's claims through political-legislative initiatives and practical activities. He remove the idyllic-demagogic outlook on youth an their living conditions in Romania starting from a pragmatic analysis of those problems and banking on a scientific vision in 1968 he created the Centre for Research into Youth Affairs. He endeavoured to obtain the broadest possible autonomy of the youth organisation as to the party and state structures and to orient it not so much towards communist propaganda among young people as towards the resolution, even if partial, of their specific problems, against the political and economic background of the respective epoch. In 1971 Ion Iliescu was appointed secretary in charge of propaganda of the CC of the RCP, a post that set him in direct contact with Nicolae Ceausescu. the immediate result was conflicts with the dictator. In that period Ceau-sescu had started a counter-offensive against the course towards modernisation and democracy in the Romanian society trying to return to a traditional communist policy and to launch the "cultural revolution" and the personality cult. Removed from the higher party and state echellons, Ion Iliescu was appointed propaganda secretary of Timis county and then first secretary of the Iasi county party organisation. Over the respective interval, the dictator - mastering the party apparatus to an insufficient extent - still had to consider the opinions expressed by party members as well as public opinion. Ion Iliescu's activity in Timisoara and Iasi showed the same opposition to the regime and he continued to try to change things "from the inside" though he was more and more convinced that the fault was not one of management but one of system. Consequently, he was placed under constant surveillance by the securitate. One of the first to have sensed and to have opposed Ceausescu's dictatorial tendency at a time when the latter's popularity was growing both at home and abroad, Ion Iliescu was also one of the first to have realised the socioeconomic and political failure of communism as both doctrine and system. In 1979, when Romania had reached its climax in economic growth and communist totalitarianism had not yet acquired the aberrant forms it did later on, Ion Iliescu was removed from the political arena and appointed chairman of the National Council of Water Management - a post for which he was recommended by his profession. In his new capacity, he tried to limit the ecological disaster that threatened Romania. Inter alia, he opposed the building of the Danube-Black Sea Canal. He was dismissed from that office, too, in 1984 was appointed director of the Technical Publishing House. Over 1984-1989, Ion Iliescu undertook studies into modern socioecomomic and technical systems, endeavouring through his editing policy to offer Romania minimal information of the rapid technical and scientific changes wrought in the developed world, of new economic policies, of the modern aspects of information science applied to the economy and of the overall problems facing manking. His was a rearguard battle in an attempt to open up avenues to a changing Europe at a time when Romania was placed more and more within the boundaries of an anachronic economic, political, cultural and scientific autarchism. Throughout those years he was under constant surveillance by the securitate being considered a major political opponent and a potential threat to the system. He lived some kind of house arrest which removed part of his friends and acquaintances and drastically limited his contacts, in an overt attempt at isolating him. That is why, during the December Revolution - both in Timisoara and in Bucharest - his name was mentioned naturally, the way the names of other well-known dissidents or opponents of the regime were. On December 22, 1989 Ion Iliescu was the one who, on behalf of the new state power body - the National Salvation Front Council - announced the dissolution of all power structures of the old regime, renunciation of the principle of a single party and of Romania's being called a "socialist republic", proclaiming the need for radical changes in the Romanian society in line with the principles of democracy, freedom and human dignity, for transition to a society set on a market economy, for political pluralism and respect for human rights. He was elected president of the National Salvation Front Council and early in February 1990, with the creation of the Provisional National Unity Council, he became its president. The National Salvation Front Conference designated him its presidential nominee. He is married. ION STOICESCU "As president of Romania, I think that my mission is to be a factor of equilibrium and mediation of the interests and actions of the political and social forces involved in the country's rebirth, to reconciliate them in the context of the new democratic structure to be built in our society. I assert before you and the whole country that I see this high magistrature put exclusively in the service of the nation, of the safeguarding and promotion of its interests in the world. This noble mission can only be fulfilled with your support as - representatives elected by the people - with the support of the government, of the political forces, of all the citizens of the country." (From the address at the inauguration ceremony). ROMANIA'S PARLIAMENT PARLIAMENTARY TRADITIONS In any democracy, hence in the democracy that is being built in Romania as well, parliament plays a particularly important role in the organization and management of the social life. With the Romanians, the first elements of a parliamentary life emerged at the beginning of last century. The oldest parliamentary institutions - the civic assemblies set up during the Reglement rules (1831) with the help of which the great boyards could supervise the princes - enlarged their representative character with the election of the diwans ad hoc (1857). They involved all social classes and were considered the most democratic representative assemblies in Europe at that time. Romania's first parliament - the National Assembly - met in Bucharest in 1862. It was the 1866 Constitution that sanctioned the bicameral parliament (the Chamber and the Senate) which - limited from the point of view of social participation degree - operated, with the amendments made in 1898, 1894 and 1917, until the end of the First World War. It was that Parliament that proclaimed "Romania's absolute independence" on May 9 1877, marking one of the greatest national holidays of the Romanians. The parliament elected after the creation of Greater Romania, which represented the entire nation - all provinces and all social categories - gave the country the Constitution of 1923 considered at that time one of the most democratic and modern constitutions in Europe. The parliament operated in normal conditions until 1937. After that year its activity had been gradually diminished. Under the 1938 Constitution which installed the royal dictatorship, the parliament played a formal role, the primordial role being played by the executive power responsible directly to the king. In September 1940, one of the first measures undertaken by the military dictatorship was the liquidation of parliamentary institutions. Parliament was called only a few times and debated only minor issues. The first parliamentary elections after the second world conflagration took place in 1946 materializing in a unicameral parliament which became a mere instrument of the executive leadership that was in the hands of the communist party for 45 years. The December 1989 revolution brought to the fore the need for democratization of Romanian society, a highly complex and comprehensive process within which parliament holds a greatly significant place. ROMANIA'S PARLIAMENT An outcome of the first free elections held in Romania in the past fifty years, Romania's Parliament elected for a two-and-a-half-year term at the most, is a constituent assembly whose main task is to work out the Constitution. It is also a legislative assembly, only until the new Constitution comes into force. After that Parliament will call new elections within one year at the most. The Romanian Parliament has two chambers. The Assembly of Deputies (the Lower House) is made up of 387 deputies adding to which are nine deputies, with the same rights nominated by the organizations of the ethnic minorities and the Senate (the Upper House), which has 119 members. The bicameral system ensures an equilibrium in exercising the legislative power. The Senate is a counterweight as is represents local collectives at county level and the army guaranteeing the adoption of solidly substantiated laws rooted in Romania's realities. The distribution of mandates in the two chambers of Parliament is as follows: [See Table 1.: Distribution of Seats in the Two Chambers of Parliament.] Another 28 seats have been distributed to smaller political parties and groups as well as to several independent candidates. As many as 12 ethnic minorities are represented on Parliament. Three of them have their seats in Parliament following the elections, while the other nine have been granted a seat in the Assembly of Deputies in keeping with the provisions of the Election Law. ION STOICESCU, GH. CALIN PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE ALEXANDRU BIRLADEANU Mr. Alexandru Birladeanu was born on 25 January 1911, in Tighina county. Graduate of the high school and University of Iasi. He began his career as a professor with the Faculty of Law of the University of Iasi. After 1944 he became a professor of the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest - the political economics chair. He has been a member of the Romanian Academy since 1955. At present he holds the office of vice-president of the Academy. He is married and has two children. "We do not dream of a perfect society, this has proved an often dangerous and suffering-bringing utopia. We must build a society which should be ever improvable, i.e. open to the better, to the new, to progress. This road of continuous improvement has no end, and we can tread it only if there is true democracy. Its ideals - liberty, dignity, decent life - ideals won by mankind with so many sacrifices over its millennium-old history, must be for ever instated in our country so that this martyr people can share them. (From his address at the ceremony of the inauguration of Romania's president) SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY OF DEPUTIES DAN MARTIAN He was born on 23 November 1935 in the commune of Remetea, Bihor county. He graduated from the secondary technical school of Oradea and then from the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest, Faculty of Economics. He continued his studies at the Lomonosov University of Moscow which he graduated in 1960. He took up work as assistant professor at Bucharest University. In 1971 he was appointed Minister for Youth Affairs. Following conflicts with the ex-dictator, he was released from that office in October 1972. In May 1974 he refused to hold a responsible office in the countryside and definitively returned to teaching as university reader. He is married and has two children. "We are called upon to form together with the senators an assembly meant to draft a new constitution the people and country so badly need. It should set from reality, from the requirements of the Romanian society as it is today, from our historical and political traditions, from the traditions of our state life." "This is a happy opportunity our participation and capability having to reflect as the country's fundamental law and we will succeed only by working jointly. That is why I think that diversity and pluralism are benefic elements and we all will have to cultivate them." (From his inaugural address to the Assembly of Deputies)