Presidential election: order on ballots
The Central Electoral Bureau has set the order of the 11 candidates on the ballots in May’s presidential election
Ştefan Stoica, 24.03.2025, 14:00
On May 4 and 18, Romanians will try for the second time in 6 months to elect their president. A presidential election was scheduled at the end of last year, but after the first round the Constitutional Court canceled it due to what it viewed as a flaw in the election process.
The Central Electoral Bureau has already set the order in which candidates will be listed on the ballot. The first is the ultranationalist and populist leader of the self-proclaimed sovereigntist AUR party, George Simion. He hopes to capitalise on a large part of the votes of the anti-Western extremist Călin Georgescu, whom he supported but who was banned from running. Because of his revisionist views, Simion is not allowed to enter the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
Second comes the candidate backed by the “Romania Forward” Electoral Alliance, the former Liberal leader Crin Antonescu, who will represent the ruling coalition comprising the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberal Party and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania. He previously ran for president, unsuccessfully, in 2009.
Third on the ballot will be the head of Save Romania Union (USR), in the pro-Western opposition, Elena Lasconi. A former journalist and currently the mayor of a town in the south of the country, she qualified into the second round of last year’s election, cancelled by the Constitutional Court, alongside Călin Georgescu.
Fourth on the list is a former priest, currently an MEP, Cristian Terheş, of an ultra-conservative orientation, followed by Lavinia Şandru, an actress and a journalist, a former MP and affiliated to several successive political parties in the past.
The sixth is the former Social Democratic leader and prime minister Victor Ponta, running independently. He resigned as prime minister in 2015 after the tragic Colectiv nightclub fire in Bucharest, which killed dozens of people. He lost the 2014 presidential race to Klaus Iohannis. Now, his ideology has shifted to the self-styled sovereigntist camp.
Seventh listed is a veterinarian, Sebastian Popescu, followed in 8th place by Silviu Predoiu, a former intelligence officer who served as interim director of the Foreign Intelligence Service. Predoiu worked for the Securitate, the feared secret police during the communist era.
John Ion Banu is a mechanical engineer who emigrated to the United States in 1985. According to Politico, he said in an interview that he would introduce the death penalty in Romania for corruption and murder, and that he supported granting Romanians the right to bear arms. He is number 9 on the ballot.
He is followed in tenth place by Daniel Funeriu, a chemist by training, a former centre-right leaning education minister and a former member of the European Parliament.
The list of presidential candidates, as they will appear on the ballot, is rounded off by Nicuşor Dan, who is serving a second term as the non-affiliated mayor of Bucharest. A mathematician by training, he became known for his activist work in combating the real estate mafia and preserving heritage sites in Bucharest. (AMP)
