A roundup of the main stories in Romania this week.
It's for the 8th time in its 30 years of post-communist democracy, that Romania is holding presidential elections. With the exception of the first such elections, held, in 1990, less than five months after the Revolution, a second round of voting was needed each and every time, as none of the candidates won half plus one of the votes in the first round.
In the race this year for a 5-year term as president of Romania are the incumbent president Klaus Iohannis, who is backed by the ruling National Liberal Party, and the former Social Democrat prime minister Viorica Dancila. In the first round, which included 14 candidates, Iohannis won 37.82% of the votes and Dancila 22.26%. Voter turnout was 51.19%. In the diaspora, where voting took place over three days, a record turnout was reported, with 675,000 people casting their ballots.
The second round of voting is also taking place over three days abroad: on Friday between 12 am and 9 pm and on Saturday and Sunday between 7 am and 9 pm, with the possibility for the voting to be extended until midnight. Voting is already under way abroad, the earliest to open being the polling stations in New Zealand and Australia. The polling stations on the west coast of the US are the latest to close, on Monday morning at 7 am. The same number of polling stations as in the first round has been maintained, 835, but the location of some of them has been moved for objective reasons. The permanent electoral authority has approved a request from the foreign ministry to change the location of certain voting stations in Germany, the UK and Spain as the venues used in the first round were no longer available.
Iulian Ivan, who works in the foreign ministry's department for electoral processes:
"I'd like to remind Romanian citizens that if they note a high flow of voters at a certain polling station, they may ask the president or members of that polling station about the location of a nearby station. Voters may contact the electoral bureau for polling stations abroad in relation to any problem encountered during the voting process."
The foreign ministry has advised Romanian citizens to check the addresses of the polling stations on the ministry's website and exercise their right to vote over the course of the three days. In Romania, the second round of the presidential elections is only taking place on Sunday, November the 24th. Like in the first round, polling stations open at 7 am and close at 9 pm, but may stay open until midnight if voters are still queuing.
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