December 12, 2020

A gold that brings fear of extreme right

topic:	Election
located:	Romania
editor:	Katarina Panić

“The most surprising outcome of last Sunday’s legislative election in Romania was the access of a party associated with the extreme right in the Parliament. The main question in the last few days was who is AUR and what does it want,” Bucharest-based journalist Vlad Odobescu told FairPlanet.

A very new political organisation, the Alliance for the Union of the Romanians (acronym AUR means “gold” in Romanian), obtained almost ten per cent of the votes, benefiting from a combination of factors.

“A generalised lack of trust in the traditional parties, a historically low turnout – around 33 per cent; the direct effects of the pandemic – for instance, AUR was the only party openly against wearing masks in open spaces with a very active online campaign,” Odobescu explained what many media outlets worldwide called shocking.

Another surprise was the opposition from social democrats, PSD ranking first with 29 per cent of the votes, even after they dealt with massive protests as the main political force between 2016 and 2019.

“However, PSD will not be able to form a government, as they are isolated in the political scene. The only valid option is a fragile centre-right coalition between the ruling liberals, PNL who had the prime minister for the last year and won some 25 per cent on Sunday, USR-PLUS an anti-system party who rose during the anti-corruption protests in 2017-2018, and the Hungarian ethnic party, UDMR,” Odobescu said.

According to him, the negotiations mediated by President Klaus Iohannis are very complicated, because PNL and USR-PLUS strongly campaigned against each other for the last few months. However, both parties are pro-European and pro-reforms, and that might help them find a common language.

President Iohannis, who campaigned for PNL, and the party itself expected to be winners. Since that did not happen, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, who is the PNL leader, resigned the day after the election.

“Another reason, an unofficial one, is related to the tensions between Presidents Iohannis and Orban. His resignation also leaves some space during the negotiations. It signals that the liberals are willing to make concessions,” Odobescu concluded.

Meanwhile, many Romanians are concerned with the rise of the extreme right in the years to come, in the context of an economy heavily affected by the pandemic.

Image by Arek Socha

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