After a surprise win in the second round of presidential elections earlier this month, Romanian President-Elect Klaus Iohannis is maintaining his momentum.
This week he discussed plans to strengthen Romania’s ties to the West and investigate allegations of the rampant political corruption – platforms he campaigned on. He also predicted that lawmakers would soon start to abandon Prime Minister Victor Ponta's ruling coalition in order to purse these policies.
Iohannis, a 55-year-old ethnic German and current mayor of Sibiu, defeated Ponta in the second round of presidential elections. Although Ponta had been ahead for most of the race, things changed with the second election.
“He was about 10 points ahead in the first ballot, and then suddenly it seemed to switch,” says security studies and a comparative politics expert Rebecca Cruise. “This came in large part from those Romanians living outside the country.”
Four million Romanians live abroad while 20 million live in the country, Cruise says. After the first election, there was speculation that Romanians living outside the country had been deterred from voting despite waiting in long lines at embassies and consulates across Europe. This sparked widespread demonstrations and a social media campaign.
“They saw this as a ploy or a tactic by the current prime minister,” Cruise says. “And so this brought out more and more people.”
In the second election the foreign vote doubled. Iohannis won with 54.43% of the vote, beating his opponent by more than 10%.
Cruise sees this election as a potentially huge step for Romania, which has remained the second-poorest country in the European Union.
“Romania is a member of the E.U., and has been since 2007, but the country has really been somewhat slow in embracing democracy,” Cruise says. “We talk about the Romanian revolution 25 year ago, but though it was very bloody, there are many who would say it really wasn't a revolution, that you had a lot of corrupt individuals that stayed in power.”
Many Romanians want change, and they believe Iohannis is up to the task.
“This coalesced into an opportunity for them to speak at the polling places,” Cruise says.
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