Iliescu’s victory

Romania’s habit of running slightly counter to other Eastern European countries continued last week when it elected by a wide margin reformed Communist, Ion Iliescu. The U.S. observers of the election must have been simultaneously pleased and confused that the high voter turnout returned via a democratic process an old-line Communist.

Iliescu ended last week by refusing requests by the visiting White House delegation, led by Gov. Garry Carruthers of New Mexico, to hold an independent inquiry into the election and to allow a privately owned television station to operate. President George Bush, who had been quiet during Romania’s often-violent push for democracy, will probably use those rejections as further justification to distance himself from the remade Romanian leader.

Though U.S. observers said the election appeared fair, Iliescu’s National Salvation Front overwhelmed the National Liberal Party and the National Peasants Party, the two groups that were organized to bring noncommunists into power, as had happened in neighboring countries. Iliescu himself may have received as much as 89 percent of the vote, nearly as high an approval rating when his predecessor Ceausescu ensured that elections returns gave him 98 percent of the vote. President-elect Iliescu used his first news conference to denounce his opposition for using “fascist language,” for their intent “to incite violence,” and for generally being poor losers.

Considering the size and intensity of the protests in Bucharest after the election, Romania is likely to find political satisfaction more elusive than did other formerly communist countries. Weakened economies burden all of Eastern Europe but Romania’s new government has the added trouble of having sustained a revolution that’s far from over.