Romanian elections 2012: what can happen after it?

The Romanian politics was never easy at all. As an ex-communist country, the working of the democracy is quite difficult to keep, and the last 8 years were hard to keep some political order in that country.

In 2004 Traian Basescu was elected as president for the first time, being reelected in 2009. However, PM Victor Ponta managed to approve in the Parliament two Basescu's votes of no confidence and in both occasions the Constitutional Court supported Basescu. In the first time the Court adduced there were no proofs against Besascu which could motivate his impeachment, and the second time was in August 2012, when the Court declared null the referendum promoted by Ponta and reinstated Besascu in his presidential post.

Nevertheless, the ballot held on last Sunday shows a difficult political landscape for Romania from now on. Sunday's elections showed an overwhelming victory for the center-left alliance of PM Ponta, which had 59% of the seats of 452 seats, making him the principal contender to be elected. A center-right coalition linked to Besascu won just 16,5% of seats, with almost total of votes counting.

The two men cannot stand even to be in the same room with each other, according to aides, and the situation got worse after Ponta's last attempt to impeach Besascu.

On the other hand, it is Mr. Basescu who has the power to appoint a prime minister. And if he does not appoint Ponta, he might be in an unsustainable political situation and could be forced to resign.

Just to ilustrate this, I will use Comin Stan's statement: “Mr. Ponta’s coalition did so well because Romanians hate Mr. Basescu more than they hate Mr. Ponta, (...) “It would be irresponsible for Mr. Basescu not to appoint Ponta, but our president is quite unpredictable and loves scandal and war.”

Comin Stan is a leading Romanian broadcaster with Realitatea TV.

From Josep Colomer's Blog: (30/07/2012).

Democracy Crises: Mali, Romania… Who’s Next?

It was expected that the ongoing international economic crisis would push a number of dictatorial regimes out, especially in underdeveloped countries. Whether the series of revolts and regime changes in the ‘Arab Spring’ can be closely associated to new economic troubles is to be explored. The rationale for the likely fall of dictatorships in bad economic times refers to their institutional incapacity to deal with unexpected, adverse developments. But with the same logic it can also be expected that the worst-designed democratic regimes can have trouble in dealing with appalling economic performances and their bad management can put them in jeopardy.

I’ve discussed the fit of institutional design in the 82 currently durable democracies regarding the size and complexity of the country, the territorial structure and degree of decentralization of government, and the electoral system (in a paper presented at the Public Choice Society meeting last year, leading now to publication, ‘Equilibrium Institutions: The Federal-Proportional Trade-Off’: click here.).

Within the set of the durable democracies, I identified Ghana,Greece, Japan, S. Korea, Mali and Romania among most likely candidates either for major institutional reform or further democratic deterioration.

Recent developments in Mali have indeed shown the fragility of what was considered one of the most successful democracies in Africa during the last twenty years: just a few weeks ago an anti-democratic military putsch was enforced while a northern region has declared secession. Greece, which holds the world record for the continuous manipulation of the electoral system, has seen its party system dismantled and is experiencing dreadful problems of governance. Now in Romania,an attempt to impeach the president by referendum has followed the opposition accusation of violating the constitution by meddling in government business, coddling cronies and using the secret services against enemies, as well as the European Commission’s “serious concerns about recent political events in Romania in relation to the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the role of the Constitutional Court”. Who is going to be next?