Traian Băsescu wins second presidential mandate by a hair

Votes cast by Romanians living abroad tilted the electoral balance in favour of the current president. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Băsescu obtained 115,831 of these votes, while his opponent, Mircea Geoană, garnered only 31,045 votes.

According to final BEC data, the presence at voting stations in the second round of elections was of 58 percent. The difference between this result and the one presented Sunday evening, which announced a presence of 56.99 percent was explained for Business Standard by BEC’s spokesman, Marian Muhuleţ. “The Sunday evening results were estimates based on a sample. The final results are the ones verified at voting stations, and include the votes from abroad,” added Muhuleţ.

The coordinator of Geoană’s campaign, Viorel Hrebenciuc, said there is a possibility that the election will be “legally” contested, as irregularities were registered in several counties. The Social Democratic Party (PSD), the National Liberal Party (PNL), and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) requested that BEC recount the votes cast by Romanians abroad, based suspicion of fraud. The Sunday evening exit-polls gave birth to a new concept: President for a day, as the results of polling institutes led Mircea Geoană to declare an “undoubted” victory, and President Traian Băsescu to say that obscure interests are lurking behind his victory.

The PSD leader avoided the press yesterday, leaving the party’s Secretary General Liviu Dragnea to announce the strategy of the social-democrats. “We are convinced that Romanians elected Mircea Geoană as President of Romania, but Traian Băsescu’s state apparatus is trying, fraudulently, to make him the President of Romania for a second mandate,” said Dragnea. “I assure you that now, as in 2004, you can have full trust in what I am telling you: I won! I assure you that at 7 p.m. the fair surveys showed that I surpassed Mircea Geoană. My plea is that, from 9 p.m. until the count of votes is finalized, my voters remain peaceful and confident that the vote count cannot be fraudulent,” said Băsescu a few minutes before the results of the survey institutes were presented.

The heads of the survey institutes told Business Standard that the results posted Sunday were within the error margin of any exit poll. They also indicated that any such study offers a 95 percent accuracy of votes, with a maximum margin of +/-3 percent.