Voters have their heart set on Ion Iliescu

Although the Constitution does not allow him to seek another term at the next presidential elections, Ion Iliescu would still get the votes of 54% of the Romanians, according to the public opinion barometer conducted by Metro Media Transilvania as ordered by the Fundatia pentru o societate deschisa (the Open Society Foundation) and released last Thursday.

Runners up in the presidential race are C.V. Tudor- 18%, Traian Basescu-11%, Adrian Nastase-5% and Teodor Stolojan-4%. The poll shows that many of those having run for Presidency in 2000 are no longer appealing to the people. It is about Petre Roman, Teodor Melescanu or Mugur Isarescu.

Sociologist Dumitru Sandu, one of the members in the Barometer jury, singled out Adrian Nastase as the main beneficiary of the votes no longer directed to Ion Iliescu in four years from now. He mentioned that the current president’s backing out of the electoral race would wreak a social-political havoc.

As for party hierarchy, the poll shows a significant progress made by the governing party, which the sociologists chose to explain by the “winner” syndrome, always developing soon after elections, by a movement of support capital from PRM (Greater Romania Party) to the current PSD (Social-Democrat Party) and by optional vote now cast by the absentees in November.

Therefore PDSR (Party of Social Democracy) is currently the leader, accounting for 60% of the options of those interviewed, followed by PRM – 17%, PD (Democrat Party) – 7%, PNL (National Liberal Party) – 6%, UDMR (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania) – 4% and CDR (the Democratic Convention) – 3%.

The poll was conducted in May, having canvassed 1,816 people, which is representative for Romania’s non-institutionalised adult population. The accepted error margin is plus or minus 2.4%.

The Barometer also revealed that 70% of the Romanians still have a positive image about the European Union, 12% have a very good opinion about the EU, while only 42% of those canvassed actually believe we are ready, even partially, for European accession.

On the other hand, 11% of the Romanians have not yet heard of our country’s application for European Union membership, while 7% think badly of this application. Half of the Romanians would agree with us imposing visas for our brethren over Prut for the sake of EU accession.

The sociologists to have analysed the results of the poll learned that the number of those feeling that “things are going in the right direction” is three times higher than six months ago (from 12% to 37%), says sociologist Dumitru Sandu, but those well-advised know this is just the hope capital any new government gets.