Romania election set to boost region’s liberals

BUCHAREST: Romania’s pro-European President Klaus Iohannis is the favourite to win the first round of the country’s election, potentially adding to a liberal fightback against the region’s prevailing nationalism.

Iohannis hails from the centreright National Liberal Party (PNL) and says a victory for the left-wing Social Democrat (PSD) candidate, ex-prime minister Viorica Dancila, would pose a threat to democracy.

The PSD’s spell in government, which began in late 2016, saw the party repeatedly clash with Brussels – and Iohannis – over allegations it was trying to push through controversial judicial reforms in order to neuter the judiciary and benefit PSD politicians.

The beleaguered left-wing government collapsed in a no-confidence vote last month.

Iohannis has made rule of law a central plank of his campaign which has mirrored that of Slovakian anti-corruption activist Zuzana Caputova, who won the presidential election in that country in March.

In Hungary too, the nationalist government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban suffered a rare setback last month when centre-left candidate Gergely Karacsony united the opposition to wrest the mayoralty of the capital Budapest from Orban’s Fidesz party.

While nationalism has been less present in Romanian politics than in Hungary or Poland, the PSD had tried to frame its clashes with EU institutions as evidence that the party was standing up for Romania.

However as the German magazine Osteuropa pointed out in a recent editorial, at May’s European elections “while Fidesz and (Poland’s ruling) PiS party won on the back of anti-Brussels campaigns, Romanian voters punished the government and sent a pro-European signal”.

The heavy losses in May’s poll added to a series of travails for Dancila’s government which eventually saw it brought down by parliament last month.