Abstract
The chapter focuses on the development of political communication and campaigning in Romania. It starts with a brief overview of the basic characteristics of the political and party system. Then, it introduces the main laws and rules the campaigners must comply with. After that, the authors describe the evolution of communication tactics and techniques used by parties and candidates to persuade voters to vote for them over the last three decades. At the end of the chapter, the authors discuss the most recent campaigning trends in Romania and summarise the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
Soy salami was an almost completely artificial food product and an unpopular symbol of life under the communist regime.
- 2.
The Democratic party (PD) exit from government.
- 3.
President Emil Constantinescu dismissed Prime Minister Radu Vasile, taking advantage of a legislative vacuum. The scandal which followed resulted in a clear stipulation in the 2003 Constitution on the relationship between the president and the government (prime minister).
- 4.
The first Romanian ‘sexgate’ whereby Constantinescu was accused, without any evidence, of having sexual intercourse with an actress (Rona Hartner); cases of cigarette smuggling at the most important Romanian airport (Henry Coandă) implicating those to the vicinity of Prime Minister Radu Vasile; etc.
- 5.
Securitate is the secret police of Nicolae Ceauşescu, officially disbanded in 1990, but whose practices and people were maintained in the post-communist period.
- 6.
Since the candidates in third and fourth place, Theodor Stolojan (PNL) and Mugur Isărescu (Romanian Democratic Convention, CDR) respectively, launched into competition by the parties in the government arch and heavily weakened electorally as they were very similar (both former premiers, both recognised economists), in the second round, Iliescu had the anti-European ultra-nationalist Corneliu Vadim Tudor as a counter-candidate. Faced with this difficult choice, the democratic forces were united in support of Iliescu, seen as the only one of the two able to keep Romania on the European path on which it had embarked.
- 7.
From an interview granted by political scientist Cristian Pârvulescu in the daily România liberă (Free Romania, 9.5.2013).
- 8.
The headquarters of the presidential administration in post-communist Romania.
- 9.
Thus, in electoral constituencies where none of the candidates receive more than fifty per cent plus one of the votes, mandates are awarded through a complex two-stage system, initially within the same electoral constituency, then at the national level, and following the D’hondt Method.
- 10.
The second referendum over the impeachment of President Băsescu was invalidated for questionable procedural reasons. The 7,403,836 citizens who voted in favour of suspending President Băsescu (only 943,375 people voted NO, being against the president’s dismissal) outnumbered those who, in 2009, elected him president (5,277,068), yet represented only 46.24% of the total population with voting rights (below the fifty per cent threshold necessary for validating a referendum). Băsescu’s opponents challenged the calculation of the number of citizens with voting rights but the Constitutional Court (CC), after debates which extended over a twenty-four period, found that the conditions for validating the referendum were not met. Three members of the CC had a separate opinion ‘considering that permanent electoral lists cannot include Romanian citizens residing abroad, nor those whose identity documents were not valid. In the end, we found that the final data could have brought about the validation of the referendum results.’ (Judgment in CC 6-21/8/2012).
- 11.
The headquarters of Romania’s government.
- 12.
It is not the first time PSD has voted for a censure motion against a government it belongs to in parliament. In 2009, less than two months before the presidential election, the first government headed by Emil Boc, of which the Social Democrats were also part, followed a no-confidence motion submitted by PNL and voted for by PSD, after Boc’s ministers resigned.
- 13.
A controversial businessman responsible for the fall of the National Investment Fund, which resulted in about three hundred thousand small investors losing their savings.
- 14.
Referring to very famous verses by the national poet Mihai Eminescu.
- 15.
An insinuating reference to Năstase’s alleged sexual preferences, never assumed by him or proven by his detractors.
- 16.
This SMS allegedly sent by any DA Alliance, was so familiar that it reached traditional media. The most watched television station of the era (ProTV) opened its main news broadcast, after announcing the electoral results, with a live broadcast from outside the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- 17.
Băsescu had wanted to collect a million signatures to enter the electoral race, as a sign that Bucharest citizens, who had voted for him at the beginning of 2004 in his second mandate at the City Hall, supported him in his presidential endeavour as well.
- 18.
#Rezist began as a Facebook group which turned into a large civic and social movement against the ruling coalition, with particular emphasis on anti-corruption issues and on the general rehabilitation of the entire political class.
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Ștefănel, A., Branea, S., Boicu, R. (2019). Romania. In: Eibl, O., Gregor, M. (eds) Thirty Years of Political Campaigning in Central and Eastern Europe. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27693-5_19
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