Reactions after Sunday’s presidential runoff

International media was quick to note Klaus Iohannis's victory in Sunday's election

Bogdan Matei, 25.11.2019, 13:50

Romania’s
centrist President Klaus Iohannis easily won a presidential runoff vote on
Sunday as expected, crushing his socialist challenger, Reuters wrote shortly after the polls closed on Sunday. France Press news agency also referred
to the president’s re-election. The right-of-center Paris-based daily Le Figaro writes that Klaus Iohannis
grabbed a good score in the election, while his opponent, Viorica Dancila,
suffered the most stinging defeat for a leftist candidate since the demise of
communism 30 years ago, which confirms the country’s European track.

Also in
Paris, Le Monde writes that Romanian
society has prevailed against politicians, referring to the years of civil
actions aimed at combating corruption. In the United States, Bloomberg writes that Klaus Iohannis’s campaign
slogan, a normal Romania, was meant to secure his re-election, in a country
that has seen years of political instability. Bloomberg also writes that Iohannis triumphed after siding with
the biggest protests since communism in opposing government attempts to
decriminalize low-level corruption.

The German media in turn describes Klaus
Iohannis, a German ethnic himself, as a counterweight to Hungary’s Prime
Minister Viktor Orban and to the Polish nationalist party in power, Frankfurter Rundschau writes. Iohannis, La Repubblica also writes, represents the
elite and the voters who are determined to consolidate Romania’s EU commitments,
to modernize the country and combat the cancer of corruption. In short,
Romanian voters have rejected years of scandals and chaos, New York Times writes, referring to the previous Social-Democrat
Governments in Bucharest.

(Translated by V. Palcu)