Romanian Presidential Elections 2019, first round – 3 oddities

Romania is about to have the first round of its presidential elections 2019 on Sunday, November 12, and Romanians are called to vote for their president for the next 5 years. Despite being held amid political turmoil and even having crossed a political crisis, this year’s presidential campaign and vote showed 3 oddities which we will discuss in detail in the following.

The first round of the Romanian presidential elections 2019 was the first presidential campaign in Romania with no debate between the first two candidates ranked by their chances to be elected

While the actual president, Klaus Werner Iohannis, has been shown by the polls as favorite to win the first round of the elections, with 45% of the votes, there are at least 5 other candidates who fight for the second place, which sends them to the second round.

The polls show that Iohannis is followed by the former Prime Minister, Viorica Dancila, who is also the head of the Social-Democratic Party. Her Government was ousted from power following a no-confidence vote in the Parliament last month, and now the social-democrats were replaced by the liberals.

Both Klaus Iohannis and Viorica Dancila refused to take part in any political debate, not between each other, nor along other candidates. Romanians simply couldn’t see a debate between the first two candidates with real chances to get to the second round.

The reason for doing so is simple – on one hand, Klaus Iohannis had everything to lose if taking part at any debate, as he is not a good political speaker, not a good political fighter in terms of one-on-one debates. On the opposite, he had everything to lose out of its 45% popularity percentage.

On the other hand, Viorica Dancila has just lost the power for her political party and she was ousted from the Government following a no-confidence vote. Her popularity was declining, along with her political party’s popularity, and any appearance in a presidential debate could have worsened the situation for her. Besides, she had serious problems with Romanian grammar, shown during interviews or political speeches, which conducted to embarrassing problems in the past for the former Romanian Prime Minister.

Though, it is worth saying that Viorica Dancila was the one to provoke Klaus Iohannis to a one-on-one debate, but the president refused.

Romanian presidential elections 2019 marked a world premiere: for the first time ever, citizens voted for the second round even before the first round of the elections!

This is something to enter the worldwide DON’T DO IT THIS WAY category in the correspondence vote section.

Up so far, thousands of Romanians who live and work abroad have voted for the second round of the elections, while the Romanian citizens who live in the country haven’t even yet been allowed to vote for the first round! Odd? You bet it is!

How did this happen? Very simple: the Romanian Liberal Party initiated a law in the Parliament for the citizens from Diaspora to be allowed to vote by correspondence. The law had some major downsides, though: the envelopes with the ballots were distributed to all those who registered for correspondence vote in one single delivery, for both rounds. Thus, instead of voting for the first round by sending one single envelope and then waiting for the results of the first round in order to send the round two envelope, thousands of Romanians from abroad sent both the envelopes, for the first round and for the second round.

Diaspora, according to the law, is allowed to vote before the Romanians in the country, who will go to vote on Sunday, November 12. This is how thousands of Romanians have already voted for the second round while the vote in the country hasn’t yet started.

Anomaly? Stupidity? Oddity? All three altogether?

The Social-Democratic Party, PSD, has already announced they will contest the Diaspora elections. This will definitely put some pressure on the Romanian Electoral Authority who has to decide if the elections abroad are legit or not.

Two presidential candidates have adopted weird ways of drawing attention upon them during this presidential campaign

It was the first presidential campaign when candidates used unconventional methods to draw attention upon them: one of the candidates, who was protected, according to the law, by the Romanian Protection and Guard Service, was officially declared missing by the very officers who were supposed to protect him. He appeared after a day, after mass-media covered his case, saying he had gone to the monastery to take the blessing for his candidature. Odd, right?

The second case is even more weird. One of the candidates had a personal implication in solving a missing person case, rape and murder. He investigated the case and had daily appearances on TV covering the news about the latest developments,.

On Friday, in the last day of the Romanian presidential campaign for the first round, he was presented on TV showing a video taken with a smartphone, in which he says the missing girl appears. The supposedly missing girl was not recognized from the video by her mother, nor did her personal features resembled the one of the missing girl, as shown by the journalists.

Romanian presidential campaign 2019 – a conclusion

Romania is 30 years away from its very moment of freedom, following the fall of the communism and the execution of its last Romanian communist president. Still, Romanians have yet to learn about democracy and democratic values.