Word: iliescu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ever since taking over from deposed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu last winter, Romanian leader Ion Iliescu has played down his Communist background and promised his countrymen a new democratic era. But actions speak louder than words. By setting club-wielding miners loose in Bucharest last week to crush antigovernment protests, Iliescu demonstrated that he was quite willing to rule by thuggery...
With a 94% turnout and 85% of the vote in elections last week, President-elect Ion Iliescu of Romania was almost in the same league as his predecessor, Nicolae Ceausescu, the Communist tyrant who posted similar landslides in pro forma balloting. But this was a free election, complete with opposition candidates and Western observers. That must have made Iliescu's victory all the sweeter, despite opposition allegations of ballot-box fraud, voter intimidation and media monopolization by his incumbent National Salvation Front...
...Iliescu's background as a former senior Communist Party official failed to outweigh the personal popularity he has won since the Front came to power last December. Working in his favor were generous food imports, an end to miserly controls over heat and light, and a go-slow approach to economic reform that has so far avoided layoffs and higher prices. The relative obscurity of his opposition rivals and their lack of support among rural and industrial workers also helped. Iliescu has said he will model Romania's economy on that of Sweden, while retaining government control of heavy industry...
Such caveats, opponents claim, bolster the contention that the Front is a neo-Communist Party anxious to retain much of the old order. "Iliescu is just like Gorbachev," charges Iuleu Boila of the Peasant Party. "He is interested in perestroika rather than real change...
Nonetheless, with the resources of the state behind it and with a large following of peasants and workers, the National Salvation Front seems increasingly confident of a sweeping victory in this weekend's elections. Not even the opposition parties seriously deny that likelihood, although they have hopes that Iliescu will be forced into a runoff for the presidency by failing to win more than 50% of the vote in the first round. It seems a faint hope -- perhaps as faint as the long-term prospects for Western-style democracy in Romania...