Yet another presidential candidate has been launched to sea: Petre Roman. With all the light effects, dancing and cheerleaders, Roman is in the same situation as everyone who has been floating for some time in the murky waters of the year 2000 elections: as with Ion Iliescu, Teodor Melescanu or Theodor Stolojan, his purpose is to serve as a push-boat to propel his boat – the party – as high as possible in the upstream of politics.
And the much-awaited Mugur Isarescu is called to respond to the same scenario, for a stuffy but fragile Convention.
Of course, this similarity is not to say that the five candidates necessarily want to win the seat in Cotroceni. It is rather about the conception of electoral strategies and the consequences they bring.
Faced with a public opinion that disregards parties, but is still sensitive to the charisma of a pair of more or less political characters, each party preferred to put out their own emblematic figure.
The reasoning is no longer secret: a charismatic candidate could earn votes to the party and in turn earn votes for himself from party devotees.
Parties therefore try to use their presidential candidates to get to the votes of as many Romanians as possible, so they can climb or at least not fall on the political staircase.
Even Ion Iliescu, who this spring was credited with 51% and enters the race as the main favourite, has the task of consolidating the party’s situation.
Driven by this fundamental interest, parties labelled as reform-minded (compared to PDSR), insisted on each having their own candidate instead of promoting a common one, who would start off with better chances of defeating Ion Iliescu.
A common candidate would have better chances for Cotroceni, but he would have been unprofitable for the Parliament vote, as the only winner would be the party of origin.
A certain change in evaluating prospects might have appeared after opinion polls started to gauge voting preferences for the two technocratic candidates: Theodor Stolojan and Mugur Isarescu.
After their emergence on the political stage, it has suddenly become clear that Ion Iliescu could be defeated in the elections by the candidate who makes it into the second round, by cumulating everyone else’s votes.
This realisation raised the stakes, but also translated the confrontation. In the two corners of the ring are not Ion Iliescu, on one end, and candidates from allegedly reform-minded parties on the other, even if they say Romania needs now more than ever to ditch the PDSR leader.
The problem is that PDSR’s and Ion Iliescu’s electorate in particular is extremely stable. The other candidates can only steal from the peripheral electorate. And then, where would Iliescu’s opponents draw their votes from?
Instead of a boxing match, we are about to witness a street rumble, not between PDSR and allegedly reform parties, but between these latter ones.
They will try to steal each other’s votes, so that most electoral accusations will target the other candidates and not Iliescu.
For instance, this weekend alone, Traian Basescu lashed at Mugur Isarescu’s “nerve” of running for presidency after ruining Bancorex and Banca Agricola, and Teodor Melescanu said the Premier was campaigning on public money. Another example is the other political candidates beginning to criticise “the myth of the technocrat.”
Who is going to win? If we are to consider strictly the chances of those who enter the second round, we should have some reserves: the two technocratic candidates will have better chances of collecting the others’ votes than some politicians would have of collecting theirs.
Another reserve is in fact a big question mark: what if one of the parties that now oppose the PDSR and Ion Iliescu eventually ends up supporting him?
In fact, from their political messages, some parties seem as unsure as several months ago whether PDSR should be defeated in the elections. PNL, ApR and PD already said they would be interested in a post-electoral collaboration with PDSR if it assimilates their political programme, or if it reforms itself. Of course, making “this-or-nothing” marriage proposals in politics is a bit risky.
A better score that will afford a party to act as a referee among coalitions, a better availability to negotiation and international recognition will let it negotiate its arrival/stay in power, within a Government with PDSR. Regardless of doctrinal orientation.