Word: ions
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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...
...going to give us our land back, and when?" shouts a burly farm worker. Before anyone can answer, a thin man with a red face rises to denounce Ion Ratiu, the Peasant Party leader and one of three presidential candidates. "He's a capitalist who ought to go back to the West," the man blusters. Retorts another angrily: "Provocateur, who sent you? If you don't like it here, get out before we throw you out!" By now, half the audience is on its feet, and only restraining arms prevent protagonists from coming to blows...
Much of the bitterness of the campaign stems from questions surrounding the legitimacy of the Salvation Front government and its right to contest the elections. Formed in the aftermath of the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu last December, the Front is dominated by former Communists. These include Ion Iliescu, the country's interim leader and front runner in the presidential race, who was Ceausescu's heir apparent in 1970 before falling out with the dictator...
...future is fading among many Romanians, only four months after the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Last week crowds of up to 4,000 opponents of the National Salvation Front, the transitional government that took power after Ceausescu's hurried execution, protested in Bucharest against interim President Ion Iliescu, whom they accuse of still sympathizing with communism. Romanian newspapers and witnesses reported that police beat some of the demonstrators, a charge denied by the government...
...good. They revel in their traffic jams; Ceausescu all but banned cars to save fuel for export. After 24 years of state-sponsored terror, martial law by young soldiers who defeated the Securitate thugs in the Christmas revolution is a relief. "I like waiting for a newspaper," Ion, a Bucharest undergraduate, said last week. "For the first time here, there's news worth reading." And food lines? At least the queues are for food, say Rumanians, savoring their first beefburgers in memory. Ceausescu drove his subjects to fisticuffs over rations of offal and chicken feet...