Traian Basescu won 50.33% of the votes, only 70 thousand votes more than his opponent Mircea Geoana, who was supported by the entire opposition and by a formidable media and financial cartel. Visibly depressed, with no traces left of the frenetic, though premature jubilation on the election night, when exit polls showed him as the winner, Mircea Geoana has finally accepted his defeat.

“As citizen of democratic Romania, I accept the Court’s decision and wish Mr. Traian Basescu success during his new term in office. I hope that this new office will be characterised by more balance, less excess and he will work more for the benefit of the Romanian citizens.”However, Geoana took the opportunity to accuse the Court that it had not taken into account all the documents that the Social Democratic Party says would prove that the election was rigged. Moreover, newspapers read, he is still ‘dreaming of being the president in Venice and Strasbourg’, threatening he ‘is ready to go there and complain presidency was stolen from him.’ Legal advisors say, though, that neither the Venice committee, nor the European Court of Human Rights ‘are dealing with electoral claims and complaints’.

In turn, political analysts believe that this stubbornness is driven not by the stake of being the President of the country, but of being the president of his party, as there are voices saying his removal is already being planned. In the pro-presidential Liberal Democratic Party, though, there is nothing but peace and quiet. With the largest number of MPs and its de facto leader back to the leadership of the country, the party believes it has all the rights to call itself the flagship of any executive formula. The vice-president of the Liberal Democratic Party, Gheorghe Flutur:

“At the moment, I believe that the political crisis triggered first and foremost by the Social Democratic Party has come to an end. We are now starting to make the first steps towards forming a government and carrying through the programs that Romanians need so badly”.

Always attached to almost all the government coalitions of the past 13 years, irrespective of their doctrines, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania was, again, the first to be ready for an association with the Liberal Democratic Party. The party president, Marko Bela.

“We will carry on talks with our colleagues from the Liberal Democratic Party, we will see what the National Liberal Party is going to say, and we would opt for their participation in such a majority coalition.”

For the time being, though, the National Liberal Party conditions their participation in the governing process on the appointment of a liberal or of an independent prime-minister. Which, newspapers say, would prove the liberal leaders’ availability to only hold ‘fake negotiations’, which can only end up in the party staying in opposition, just as it did during the election campaign, on the side of the Social Democratic Party.