Romania’s mayor pulls off shock victory
BUCHAREST: An ethnic German mayor of a medieval Transylvanian city pulled off a shock victory in Romania’s presidential elections, defeating the premier after vowing to stamp out corruption in the graft-riddled country, early results showed yesterday.
Klaus Iohannis, a soft-spoken former physics teacher known for avoiding conf lict, secured an overwhelming 54 per cent of the votes cast in Sunday’s poll, according to partial results, soundly beating Prime Minister Victor Ponta.
The election was seen as pivotal for one of the poorest countries in Europe that has struggled to overcome an entrenched culture of corruption.
Exit polls had put the two candidates neck-in-neck after Sunday’s election, but did not take into account the votes cast by the large Romanian diaspora, which was seen as more likely to vote to Iohannis.
“We’ve won!” Iohannis wrote on his Facebook page.
Ponta conceded defeat, saying “I congratulated Mr Iohannis on his victory. The people are always right.”
Partial results showed that a record 64 per cent of voters cast ballots in the poll in a country where previous ballots have been marked by voter apathy. Official results are expected to be announced later on Monday.
Ponta, 42, had hoped to become Romania’s youngest ever president and cement his Social Democrat party’s hold on power in the former communist state.
In the first round on November 2, he took 40 per cent of the vote against 30 per cent for Iohannis.
But 46 per cent of the ballots cast abroad were for Iohannis compared to just 16 per cent for Ponta, who was so confident of victory he said he planned to watch the results at home eating popcorn i n the front of the television.
Experts had earlier said that a high turnout in the second round could well tilt the balance in Iohannis’s favour.
“Thevotehasbeenphenomenal. The turnout was huge,” said Iohannis, the centre-right mayor
The vote has been phenomenal.The turnout was huge. Klaus Iohannis, a soft-spoken former physics teacher
of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu, who comes from the country’s ethnic German community that was persecuted under the country’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu.
Iohannis,whofacedaccusations of not being a “real Romanian”, campaignedonananti-corruption platform, vowing to turn Romania into a “normal” country.
Observers say he appealed to voters with his reliability and honesty in a country sick of government corruption, with several senior figures in Ponta’s formerly communist Social Democrats accused of graft.
Rodica Avram, a 56-year-old teacher, said after casting her ballot in Bucharest that she had voted for change.
“For the past 25 years we have heard nothing but lies and promises that weren’t kept,” she said. “I hope we’ll finally have a president who respects people and does what he promises.”
Ponta’s main support base came from the hugely influential Romanian Orthodox Church, as well as his party’s traditional electorate of the rural population, small business employees and the elderly.
Ahead of the vote experts said Romania’s diaspora, which numbers about three million, could play a key role in swinging the result. — AFP