100 Days Left until the European Parliament Elections

Bogdan Matei, 12.02.2014, 14:04

XX has more in a commentary by Bogdan Matei.

The Romanian political scene is these day full of frenzy, typical of an election year. Actually, 2014 is the year of both elections for the European Parliament and presidential elections. Therefore, parties, alliances and cartels are all repositioning, redefining and recomposing themselves following their own rationale, which sometimes eludes both the media and the voters. Seen as a success formula back in 2012, when it won the legislative elections with almost 70% of the votes, the Social Liberal Union is now lying on its deathbed. The two main parties that make up the ruling coalition, the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal party, are affiliated to competing European families, so they will run for the European Parliament on separate lists. Moreover, the Social Liberal Party has recently set up its own Social-Democratic Union, inside the Social-Liberal one.

Offering them an eligible place on its own lists, Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s party has brought closer its junior partners, namely the National Union for the Progress of Romania, established years ago by social-democrat dissidents, and the Conservative Party, which used to be the liberal’s ally in the already dissolved Centre-Right Alliance. Unable, ever since their establishment, to get over the 5% threshold, the two pocket-parties are therefore kept alive thanks to the benevolence of the most powerful political party of the moment.

With or without such allies, the Social Democratic Party already ranks 1st in the polls, with a voting intentions figure standing at 37%, and will therefore get at least 10 of the 32 MEP seats allocated to Romania. Number two in the government coalition, the Liberal Party is likely to get some 20% of the votes and therefore deemed to remain second on the Romanian political scene. Also, liberals seem to get more isolated by the day, at a time when they are in dire need of allies, because their leader, Crin Antonescu, is the Social Liberal Union’s presidential candidate and, in order for him to be elected, he must get the support of the left.

Out of the nebula of the so called popular right wing, repositioned as opposition group, it’s only the Liberal Democratic Party, with a potential share of 17-18%, that seems to be able to stay above the election threshold. After the rupture between Liberal — Democrats and their former chief, Traian Basescu, there are now several recently established parties, such as People’s Movement, the Civic Force and the New Republic, which are gravitating around the President, all claiming to defend the right-wing ideology and all competing against the Liberal Democratic Party, but at the same time able to secure for themselves less 5% of the votes.

Even the long-lived Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, affiliated to the European People’s Party, is unlikely to get more than 4.7%. However, analysts say that the Union benefits from the support of a disciplined electorate, established on ethnicity, who, no matter how unhappy with their own political representatives, manage to mobilize themselves for each election and push the Union over the election threshold.