Presidential elections were held in Romania in 2014. They were the seventh presidential elections held in post-1989 Romania. In the first round of the elections on 2 November, the top two of the fourteen candidates qualified in a run-off on 16 November. These candidates were Victor Ponta, former Prime Minister and ex-leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) who won around 40% of the vote in the first round, and Klaus Iohannis, then mayor of Sibiu (German: Hermannstadt) and leader of the Christian Liberal Alliance (ACL), who won around 30% in the first round respectively. Following large protests on how Ponta's government organized the elections in the diaspora, Klaus Iohannis staged a surprising come-back and won the run-off with 54.5%, or more than a million votes than his contender.
Ponta, who had been previously serving as Prime Minister of Romania since May 2012, ran his campaign on promoting an alleged national reconciliation message of a "great union" between all Romanians, defending his governance as balanced, with both progressive and right-wing measures, and promising to end the "era" established by the then incumbent president, Traian Băsescu. However, his government faced some indirect international criticism, with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland criticizing in October 2014 what she called the "cancer of democratic regression and corruption" in several Central and Southeast Europe nations and with politicians who "protect the corrupt office holders from prosecution and bypass parliament as often as it suits them". Iohannis, a Transylvanian Saxon (therefore part of the community of the Germans of Romania), focused his campaign on judicial independence and fiscal relaxation, and promised to promote "Romania of thoroughness" and a "Romania of things well done," while blaming the country's economic and political problems on the regional governance of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the so-called "barons".
The electoral campaign ran between 3 October and 1 November and was overshadowed by several corruption scandals (Microsoftgate, EADS, illegal retrocessions) involving key figures of PSD, but also the candidate Elena Udrea. Outgoing President Traian Băsescu accused Victor Ponta of being an undercover spy, incompatible under the Romanian legislation with a public position, while Klaus Iohannis faced accusations of incompatibility filed by the National Integrity Agency after September, 2013. Following very long voting times and large numbers of people who couldn't vote before the closing of polls in diaspora, large protests were staged in multiple cities across Romania and at Romanian embassies before the second round. This was regarded as both incapacity and unwillingness of Ponta's government to organize fair elections, and led to a surprisingly large turnout of over 64% (largest since 1996), and a surprise win for Iohannis in the second round.
Background
Traian Băsescu won the last presidential election in 2009 and was sworn in for his second term on 21 December 2009. According to the Article 83 of the Constitution of Romania, the "term of office of the President of Romania is five years, being exercised from the date the oath was taken," but only for up to two terms.
The dates were decided by the government in February:
- 5 September: the Supreme Court announced the composition of the Central Electoral Bureau for the presidential election, composed of judges from the High Court of Cassation and Justice appointed by lot, representatives of the Permanent Electoral Authority and of the political parties. Judge Veronica Năstasie is elected president of the Central Electoral Bureau.
- 23 September: last day for submitting candidacies and the electoral insignia of the candidates.
- 24 September: the Central Electoral Bureau validated all the 14 submitted candidacies.
- 3 October–1 November: electoral campaign.
- 2 November, 7 a.m.–9 p.m.: first round of the presidential election, with over 18.3 million people in the country and 530,000 Romanians abroad expected to go to the polls.
- 6 November: validation and publication of the election results in the Official Monitor.
- 7–15 November: electoral campaign for second round.
- 16 November 7 a.m.–9 p.m.: second round of the presidential election.
- 21 November: validation and publication of the election results in the Official Gazette.
Candidates
Fourteen candidates submitted to the Central Electoral Bureau files with the number of signatures collected from citizens (at least 200,000) by 23 September 2014: Victor Ponta, Klaus Iohannis, Monica Macovei, Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, Teodor Meleșcanu, Elena Udrea, Dan Diaconescu, Hunor Kelemen, Zsolt Szilágyi, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, Constantin Rotaru, William Brînză, Mirel Mircea Amariței and Gheorghe Funar.
The left-wing parties designated a single candidate: Victor Ponta, the current Prime Minister. He was rated with the best chance of winning the election by main opinion polls. On the other hand, the main right-wing parties, strengthened under the Christian Liberal Alliance, have designated Klaus Iohannis, the second favorite of the opinion polls. However, the so-called "right wing" was still divided, with many newly formed parties with small number of members designating their own presidential candidates, such as Elena Udrea, candidate from the People's Movement Party and supported by the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party. There were four independent candidates: former Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, former Minister of Justice Monica Macovei, former Chief of the Foreign Intelligence Service Teodor Meleșcanu and former Mayor of Cluj-Napoca Gheorghe Funar.
This was a record number of candidates since 1996, since in 2000, 2004 and 2009, only 12 candidates were admitted each election. Likewise, this was the first time women candidates (Elena Udrea and Monica Macovei) ran for the position of president of the country and the first time three ethnics of the national minorities figure on the ballot papers. A number of people announced they would be running was greater, but they failed to gather the 200,000 signatures needed for the submission of the candidature to the Central Electoral Bureau by the 23 September deadline, such as Ioan Ghișe.
Several candidates had announced their intention to run for president, but eventually withdrew in favor of other candidates:
- Crin Antonescu, interim President of Romania in 2012: one of the leading figures of the Social Liberal Union (USL), Antonescu was the joint candidate of the political alliance, but he stepped down as President of PNL and announced the withdrawal of his candidature following the split of USL in February 2014 and the poor results of PNL in the European Parliament election.
- Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, former Prime Minister of Romania: Ungureanu was a candidate for the Civic Force, but withdrew after the party he led was absorbed into the Christian Liberal Alliance in July 2014.
- Cristian Diaconescu, former Presidential Adviser of Traian Băsescu: he was elected as official candidate of newly formed People's Movement Party, but withdrew from the presidential race to support his party colleague, Elena Udrea, who scored higher in the opinion polls.
- Cătălin Predoiu, former Minister of Justice: he was the official candidate of PDL, after winning an internal election, but after the merger of PNL and PDL, an election was organized to determine the candidate of the alliance, where he lost to Klaus Iohannis.
1Tăriceanu's Liberal Reformist Party led was not registered at the time, so he decided to run as an independent.
2At the time of the election there was an ongoing dispute between Corneliu Vadim Tudor and Gheorghe Funar as to who is the legitimate leader of the Greater Romania Party. Because Corneliu Vadim Tudor appeared as the leader of the party in the Register of Political Parties kept at the Bucharest Tribunal, Gheorghe Funar ran as an independent.
Campaign
Victor Ponta launched his campaign on his birthday, in a huge rally on the National Arena. Over 70,000 people from across the country attended the rally. One of the stadium lawns was covered with four large panels inscribed with the slogan "Proud to be Romanians" and depicting Romanian folk motifs. Many opposing political analysts, members of the opposition and even President Traian Băsescu have likened the event to the rallies in the communist period dedicated to Nicolae Ceaușescu or, more recently, those dedicated to Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. Likewise, he was criticized by PMP candidate Elena Udrea for the cost of organizing such an event which, she said, was around 2 million euros.
Klaus Iohannis launched his campaign in front of the Government, in the presence of up to 30,000 people. The special guest of the event was the Secretary General of the EPP, Antonio López-Istúriz White, who stated that "Victor Ponta cannot and should not become president of the European Romania". The vast majority of Romanians are Eastern Orthodox Christians like Ponta, while Iohannis is Protestant. Commenting on a poll, according to which 58.22% of the respondents said for them the religion of the President mattered, while 39.81% said they were indifferent to the issue, Ponta said he did not believe that a candidate for President "has a problem if he is Orthodox or is not of Romanian ethnicity". Iohannis has reacted strongly to the statement by his rival, saying that bringing the issue of religion is a "painful attempt" to poison the campaign. Iohannis' slogan in the presidential campaign was "less talk, more things done", alluding to frequent television appearances of his rival, Victor Ponta. In his presidential program are mentioned, among others: deepening of the strategic partnership with the United States, allocation of 2% of GDP for defense, 6% for health and 6% for education, restructuring of the management system of EU funds, development of the capital market, keeping the flat tax, return of VAT to 19%, etc. Iohannis proposes a liberal economy based on competitiveness and prosperity, encouragement of a highly developed agriculture, connection of Romania to the Western world through infrastructure or decentralization, as "vector of modernization". Likewise, for Klaus Iohannis, the European path of the Republic of Moldova is a national priority.
Elena Udrea launched her campaign for the presidency through an anti-governmental march attended by 10,000 people. She expressed her intention to dissolve the Parliament and form a new Government, in the eventuality that she would win the election. Udrea is supported by outgoing President Traian Băsescu who intended to join the party Udrea leads at the end of his mandate in December.
During the early days following the first round of the 2 November election, that saw the two main candidates from all opinion polls facing off in a 16 November runoff, several of the candidates that fell short of acceding into the second round have declared their support for one of the two remaining candidates. Prime Minister and PSD leader Victor Ponta, who came first with 40.4% of the votes ahead of Sibiu mayor and ACL candidate Klaus Iohannis who earned a distant 30.3%, received the backing of the second runner-up, former premier and Senate president Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, from the Liberal Reformist Party, who would also have been Ponta's proposal to replace him as Prime Minister, had Ponta won.
Other candidates who also publicly declared their support for Ponta were: Dan Diaconescu, from PP-DD, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, from PRM and independent candidate Teodor Meleșcanu. Despite UDMR's presence in the government led by Ponta, Hunor Kelemen expressed neutrality and recommended Hungarian electorate "vote according to their own beliefs". He said that UDMR can't support Victor Ponta in the second round because the Social Democrats have allied with PRM, an ultra-nationalist party, with which UDMR had several conflicts over time. Internationally, Ponta received support from many current Prime Ministers across Europe, like the Moldovan premier Iurie Leancă, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Serbian premier Aleksandar Vučić, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Czech premier Bohuslav Sobotka, Georgian premier Irakli Garibashvili and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, among others. Also, the Party of European Socialists expressed clear support for the candidature of Ponta to the Romanian presidency.
Others were Sigmar Gabriel (Germany, SPD), Elio Di Rupo (Belgium, Parti Socialiste), Gianni Pittella (Italy) and Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament).
Iohannis announced that he would not negotiate with other candidates, though he needed as much as 21% of the votes to recuperate and win. Elena Udrea, from the PMP–PNȚCD Alliance, didn't avowedly express her support for Klaus Iohannis, but stated that the vote on 16 November should be anti-Ponta. On the other hand, independents Monica Macovei and Mirel Mircea Amariței, as well as PPMT-backed Zsolt Szilágyi announced their support for Iohannis. Likewise, Iohannis enjoyed international support from the European People's Party and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Victor Ponta and key figures of his party accused Klaus Iohannis of wanting to separate Transylvania from the rest of Romania, because Iohannis won a large majority of the votes on 2 November in the intra-Carpathian region. Iohannis criticized these statements, describing them as "cretinisms". He also said that the idea of "breaking Transylvania" was "totally false, from another century and harmful", and came up because "people like the PRM are coopted for some votes". This topic was intensively discussed in local media. Many political commentators consider that dissimilar cultural heritage that each of the regions of Romania has is an exponent of the different vote expressed by Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina, Crișana and Maramureș, as opposed to Moldavia, Wallachia and Dobruja.