Not Free, Not Fair: An Assessment Of The 20 May 1990 Elections In Romania

Introduction

On 20 May 1990, 14.6 million of the over 17 million registered voters in Romania voted in national elections. For the first time since the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe began to unravel in late 1989, a communist party — now calling itself the National Salvation Front — received more than a small portion of the vote. In fact, the Front’s presidential candidate, Ion Iliescu, received 85 percent of the vote while the two opposition candidates from genuinely democratic parties, Radu Campeanu and Ion Ratiu, received 11 and 4 percent respectively.

In a pre-election analysis, the Center examined whether the post-Ceausescu communist regime, the Front, was truly permitting the democratic opposition parties to have a fair opportunity to compete for votes during the election campaign. It is now apparent that the concerns that the Center raised in that paper, entitled Romania: Will the Communist Successors to Ceausescu Permit Truly Fair and Free Elections? (No. 90-45, 11 May 1990), were well-founded. Put simply, the Front was successful in compromising the election campaign and corrupting its results.

The Compromised Campaign

Among the problems that made the campaign less than free and fair were the following:

• The Front fully exploited the resources of the government and had unlimited use of public funds in its campaign. In many towns, the National Salvation Front was the only party able to campaign actively.

 

• The Front intimidated and attacked opposition supporters throughout the campaign. These "violent physical attacks" have been documented by international human rights groups. Margaret Thompson, program director for the U.S. National Republican Institute for International Affairs, for example, has recounted seeing opposition rallies broken up by club-wielding gangs. At times, she said, members of one opposition group, the Peasant Party, were "beaten and run out of certain towns."

 

• "Free Romanian Television" — which played such an important anti-Ceausescu role during the violent events of 1989 — ran programming strongly favoring the Front regime and giving very little coverage to the democratic opposition parties.(1)

 

• The dreaded secret police (the Securitate) were transferred to the Ministry of Defense in late December 1989 by interim President Iliescu. Thereafter, all televised (i.e., officially sanctioned) criticism of the Securitate suddenly stopped. Moreover, foreign reporters and others noted months later that, in many places, plainclothes Securitate officers were going about their work as they had before the fall of Ceausescu.

Corrupted Election Results

Western and international observer groups were present in Romania during the voting on 20 May 1990. Based on their observations, a number of other indications of a fraudulent election have now been reported. For example:

• Election observers discovered ballots pre-marked for the National Salvation Front;

 

• Local officials of the Front regime were reported to be inside polling booths while the polls were open;

 

• The fact that the Securitate is widely believed still to be operating, combined with the systematic pre-election violence and the tradition of rigged Romanian elections, evidently gave rise to a climate of fear whose impact on the balloting was, while difficult to quantify, nonetheless quite palpable.

Aftermath of a Rigged Election

As a result of these developments, the presidential candidates for both main democratic parties denounced the elections. Ion Ratiu of the National Peasant Party stated, "the run-up to the elections has been totally undemocratic." Similarly, Radu Campeanu, presidential nominee of the National Liberal Party, who had warned on the day of the elections that "there is a fear they will be rigged," claimed two days later that fraud had cost him as much as 25 percent of the vote.

In a belated protest against the unfairness of the campaign, the Bush Administration withdrew its Ambassador prior to the election and publicly criticized the Front on 10 May 1990. Then, in the face of irregularities during the voting process itself, the Bush Administration initially took the correct step and urged the Romanian government to form an independent commission to investigate the charges made by Romanian democratic leaders and western observers.

This recommendation was rejected by Iliescu, by then the president-elect. Shortly thereafter, on 26 May 1990, the State Department made the serious mistake of asserting that — although irregularities had marred the Romanian election — the U.S. lacked "evidence that these…were of sufficient weight to have altered the outcome."

In part, thanks to the legitimacy conferred on the National Salvation Front by Washington’s revised appraisal of the election, Iliescu was able to claim that those protesting the unfair election (who were brutally attacked yesterday in Bucharest by government forces) amounted to "an organized attempt to remove by force and violence the country’s elected leaders."

Recommended Policy Approach

The Center for Security Policy believes that, rather than legitimize this recent election and condone in any way the Front’s repression of advocates of genuine democracy, the Bush Administration should take a strong stand against the unfree, unfair Romanian campaign and election. Doing otherwise constitutes a dangerous precedent for future elections in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Consequently, the Center recommends that the United States take the following steps:

• Refuse to acknowledge the National Salvation Front regime as a democratically elected government. The Iliescu government should not enjoy the same privileges and public standing as its East European neighbors which have held genuinely free and fair elections.

 

• Insist that Romania accept the two recommendations suggested by New Mexico Governor Garry Carruthers, head of the U.S. Presidential Observer Delegation, namely, to:
  • "Encourage and assist with the development of a much wider range of free and independent broadcast media in Romania, and…see such a development take place before the next national elections," including the creation of a private, independent television station; and,

   

  • Form an independent commission to examine and report publicly on the irregularities surrounding the 20 May elections.

 

 

• Link any future U.S. economic assistance to the Iliescu regime’s tolerance of opposition groups and public dissent;

 

• Disclose and criticize any continuing links between the KGB or other Soviet security apparatuses and elements of the Romanian Front regime. Similarly, the United States should make regular reports of any hostile international actions on the part of the Romanian regime or its suppression of the democratic freedoms Romania has pledged to uphold since the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.

1. See Crisula Stefancescu, "’Free Romanian Television’ Losing Its Credibility," Report on Eastern Europe, 23 March 1990, pp. 24-29.