BUCHAREST: Prime Minister Victor Ponta looks set to become Romania’s youngest president in a runoff vote yesterday, a result that could make one of Europe’s poorest nations more stable as it looks to exit an IMF-led aid deal.
Backed by a well-oiled party machine, Ponta has led opinion polls and comfortably beat his nearest challenger, ethnic German mayor Klaus Iohannis, in the first round election on November 2.
The former Communist state of 20 million is emerging from painful budget cuts imposed during the global slowdown. Growth rebounded to more than 3 percent in the third quarter of 2014, but corruption and tax evasion are rife, and progress to implement reforms and overhaul a bloated state sector is mixed.
A former prosecutor and amateur rally driver, the 42-year-old Ponta has courted voters with tax cuts and promises of more pension hikes, shrugging off several scandals that dogged the final weeks of his campaign.
A Ponta presidency would tighten his leftist Social Democrat party’s grip on power. Prime minister since 2012, Ponta often feuded with his rival, outgoing President Traian Basescu, which stymied policymaking and had sparked a constitutional crisis.
Without the check on power hitherto provided by Basescu, Ponta’s rise has raised concerns he might tighten political control over the judiciary, prosecutors and media, in a country whose justice system remains under special EU supervision.
Reuters
