Behind the scenes of the 2009 presidential election

A special parliamentary committee is looking into the strange unfolding of the presidential election of 2009

Bogdan Matei, 24.05.2017, 13:53

In a very democratic, although
rather perfunctory move, a special Parliament committee is investigating the
unclear circumstances in which in 2009 Traian Basescu won a second term in
office as president of Romania, after defeating the then president of the
Social Democratic Party Mircea Geoana in the runoff. The committee was set up
following disclosures by the controversial journalist Dan Andronic. Heard on
Monday, he said he had no other information apart from what he had already made
public, nor any evidence that the election had been rigged. A questionable
character, arrested last year in a corruption-related investigation, and the
author of a booklet whose very title, 100% anti-Basescu, is tale-telling of
his firm beliefs in the early 2000s, Andronic later switched sides and got a
well-paid job as political adviser to then-president Basescu.

He said in an interview recently
that on the night of the runoff 8 years ago, he had met, in an informal setting,
with the then Prosecutor General of Romania Laura Codruta Kovesi, currently the
head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, the former head of the
Romanian Intelligence Service George Maior, now the Ambassador of Romania to
Washington, and his deputy Florian Coldea. According to Andronic, the meeting
looked very much like the gathering of a crisis committee. All the
participants, Andronic went on to say, risked losing their positions had Geoana
won the election. Hence the tension with which they received the exit-polls
indicating the Social Democrat Geoana as the winner, and the sigh of relief at
the news, made public the next morning, that Basescu had won after all, by a
very narrow margin.

On Tuesday, both Geoana and his
campaign chief Viorel Hrebenciuc, appeared before the committee. Still
unconsoled after that defeat, which made him a subject matter for many jokes,
Geoana said there had been a deliberate effort, coordinated by top-level
leaders of public institutions in Romania, and intended to influence the
outcome of that election. Hrebenciuc, too, said he suspected a fraud,
especially in the polling stations abroad, some of which had reported more than
a thousand voters in only 14 hours.

The former chief of the Permanent
Electoral Authority, Octavian Opris, said that, according to documents signed
by officers with the relevant institutions, the 2009 elections took place in
normal conditions and all the relevant documents were legal. Opris admitted,
nonetheless, that the way the vote had been organized at the Romanian Embassy
in Paris, run at that time by a very pro-Basescu Ambassador, Teodor Baconschi,
did not look completely right.

The parliamentary committee will
next hear other prominent diplomats and politicians involved in that election.
Commentators note that, even if shattering revelations were made, nothing can
now take back Basescu’s term in office or make Geoana president instead. The
only likely consequence of the investigation is that people’s distrust of an
already unpopular political class would be dramatically reinforced.