November 12, 2016

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 12.11.2016, 12:05

ELECTION CAMPAIGN
The campaign for the December 11th parliamentary elections in
Romania started on Friday. Some 6,500 people, both party members and
independent candidates, have registered for the race to get one of the 466
seats in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The system used this year is
the party-list proportional representation system, used back in 2004. The
parties standing the biggest changes of being represented in the next
Parliament are the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberal Party, the Save
Romania Union, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats and the People’s Movement
Party.

MOLDOVA Sunday will see the
second ballot of the presidential elections in the neighboring Republic of
Moldova, the former Soviet country with a predominantly Romanian-speaking
population. Competing are the pro-Russia socialist Igor Dodon and the pro-West
reformist Maia Sandu. Some 3 million citizens are thus expected to the polls to
elect their president, for the first time after 16 years in which the president
was designated by Parliament. Pundits say that the stake of the ballot is not
just political, but also geo-political. Dodon wants his country to join the
Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Union, while Sandu stands for reform and European
integration.

PROTESTS Demonstrations have
been held for three nights in a row in big cities and university campuses in
the US against the president – elect Donald Trump. Protesters say that,
although they know they cannot change the result of the election, they want to
draw attention to the fact that there are many reasons for people to be unhappy
with the future president, whose campaign included lots of insulting remarks
against women, as well as threats such as the one about building a wall between
the US and Mexico to keep immigrants away. Initially, Trump said that
protesters were professional rioters, incited by the media. Later he
reconsidered his position, saying the protesters were people who loved their
country and made an appeal to unity.

TALIBAN ATTACK NATO has
announced that Bagram, the largest American base in Afghanistan, near capital
Kabul, has been hit by an explosion, which killed 4 people. The attack has been
claimed by Taliban insurgents. The Bagram base is a regular target for the
Taliban. Six American soldiers were killed in December last year, when a
Taliban riding a motorcycle blew himself up near the base. That was one of the
bloodiest attacks against the foreign troops in Afghanistan in 2015.

FOOTBALL
On Friday night in Bucharest, Romania’s
national football team lost the match against Poland 0-3. The national squad
now stands less chances of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup hosted by Russia.
With only 5 points, Romania ranks 4th in the preliminary group E,
after Poland with 10 points, Montenegro with 7 points and Denmark with 6. In
the same group, also on Friday, Armenia defeated Montenegro 3-2, and Denmark
beat Kazakhstan 4-1. On Tuesday, the Romanian national squad will take on the
Russian team in a friendly game hosted by Grozny. The next official game of the
Romanian national football team is scheduled for March, on home turf, against
Denmark.

RUGBY Romania’s national
rugby team is today playing in Bucharest against the US squad a test-match at
the end of which the winner will get the Pershing Cup. The trophy has been
awarded by the Romanian rugby Federation since 2014, in memory of the game held
at the Inter-Allied Military Olympics organized in 1919 by the Commander of the
American Expeditionary Force, General John Joseph Pershing, to mark the end of
the first world war. Seven of the eight games held so far have been won by the
US.