‘Ponta and Iohannis to face off for the presidency’

The first-round result of the presidential election in Romania on 2 November was “predictable”, writes Adevărul: social-democrat prime minister Victor Ponta and his liberal rival Klaus Iohannis will go head-to-head in a second round run-off vote on 16 November. According to partial results, they received 40.33 and 30.44 per cent of the vote, respectively. The participation rate was 53 per cent.

The vote was marked by the anger of Romanians in the diaspora: of the three million eligible to vote, only 161,000 were allowed to cast ballots, notes the Bucharest daily. Some “lined up for four hours in order to vote” writes Adevărul, but many were unable: in Paris, for example, security forces had to intervene in order to prevent angry voters from entering the Embassy following the closure of the voting booth.

In Bucharest, adds the paper, several hundred voters took to the street to demonstrate their support for “the humiliated diaspora”. Even unrecognised, an analyst tells the daily, —

the diaspora vote weighs infinitely heavier than the stamp they were unable to affix [on their ballots]. The invisible Romanians have become a visible critical mass.