The presidential campaign begins
Fourteen candidates are running in the first round of the presidential election.
Ştefan Stoica, 25.10.2024, 14:00
Romania saw the start of the campaign for the first round of the presidential election on Friday. The campaign ends at 7 am on November 23. The first ballot is scheduled for November 24, while the runoff will take place on December 8. In between, on December 1, on Romania’s National Day, the country holds general elections.
This is the first time in 20 years that all types of elections are held within a year. On June 9, Romanians elected their representatives in the European Parliament and held local elections as well. The 2024 election marathon comes to an end on December 8, with the decisive round of the presidential election.
As many as 14 candidates take part in the race for the presidential seat, 10 of them backed by political parties and 4 running independently. Unsurprisingly, the candidates supported by political parties stand more chances to win, especially since they are also the leaders of those parties.
The Social Democrats nominated the incumbent PM Marcel Ciolacu, and the Liberals, also part of the ruling coalition, are backing the Senate speaker Nicolae Ciucă.
But while the government is still technically operational, the relations between the two parties in the coalition and between their respective leaders have deteriorated in the past few months, precisely for election-related reasons.
The Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), a nationalist party which came out 3rd in this year’s local and EU parliamentary elections in Romania, also sent its leader, George Simion, in the presidential race. Save Romania Union, the 3rd largest party in Parliament at present, will also be represented in the presidential election by its leader, Elena Lasconi. In turn, the candidate of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania is the party president, Hunor Kelemen.
The list of high-profile candidates also includes several independent politicians. Mircea Geoană, a former Social Democratic leader and until recently the deputy secretary general of NATO, is running again, after he was very close to becoming president in 2009.
The candidate list also includes the former ministers Ana Birchall and Cristian Diaconescu, both of them running independently, and the former Liberal president and ex-PM Ludovic Orban, who is backed by a small right-of-centre conservative party.
Nearly 7,000 Romanian nationals living abroad registered as voters by mail by the October 10 deadline. They will receive the ballots no later than October 30. The authorities promise that more than 900 polling stations will be opened abroad, as was the case in the EU parliamentary elections as well. (AMP)
