WIRE:12/07/2000 06:38:00 ET

All eyes on ultra-nationalist Tudor in Romania poll

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20001207_669.html


BUCHAREST, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Love him or hate him, hardline nationalist Corneliu Vadim Tudor is the issue as Romanians vote in Sunday"s second and decisive round of presidential elections. "These elections should be Europe"s wakeup call," said analyst Heather Grabbe of London"s Centre for European Reform. "The EU has been incapable of supporting reform in a way that allows Romania to follow a virtuous cycle of reform, rather than a vicious cycle of inertia and failed reform," she said. The flamboyant, 51-year-old Tudor, a publisher whose newspapers print material that is anti-Semitic, anti-gypsy or disparaging of this hard-luck country"s large ethnic Hungarian community, has streaked from nowhere to challenge former President Ion Iliescu in the winner-take-all second round. Tudor feeds on a rich vein of anger over living standards that have plunged since communism was overthrown in 1989. Reforms demanded by the EU and other institutions have cut jobs but done little to stem rampant corruption, the rise of local crime syndicates and a feeling that Romania, dead last among the 12 EU accession candidates, is going nowhere fast. "I"m the white sheep in a flock of black sheep," Tudor, who relishes publicity and wore a big medal and formal evening wear for his last television appearance, said on Wednesday night. "The patience of Romanians has snapped, Romania has proved to be a big nation, with the vote stronger than the sword." Tudor still basks in the glow of his stunning second place finish in the first round, where he beat prominent politicians. After taking 4.72 percent of the vote in 1996, he got 28.3 percent last month to force a runoff against onetime communist Ion Iliescu, 70, who took 36.4 percent. A poll of 1,200 people by IRSOP showed 69 percent for Iliescu and 31 percent for Tudor, but pollsters mostly are shying away from predicting Sunday"s outcome. Calin Anastasiu of the IMAS polling firm said normally Iliescu would win, but with many young people having voted for Tudor in the first round, the mood is anything but normal. "Young people are usually emotional in their choices and Tudor with his media show has really impressed them," he said. Tudor"s talk of tough justice and restoring Romania to some sort of past industrial grandeur have struck a chord. "Romanians need a strong fist and a determined man to crush thieves and the strong mafia which has overrun our country," said Ilie Dinulescu, 36, a Bucharest taxi driver. But what wins over some Romanians scares others. "If he wins on December 10 I will leave Romania," said Roma activist Virgil Bitu of the rights group Romani CRISS. Roma gypsies, who may make up some five percent of the country"s 22.4 million people, are prime targets for Tudor who promises to smash what he says is their stranglehold on protection rackets and trafficking in prostitutes. Tudor"s meteoric rise has also alarmed the tiny Jewish community, which stood at 750,000 before World War Two but after pogroms, the Holocaust and post-war emigration, amounts to only 12,000 people today. Tudor said recently that he has been unfairly painted as an extremist by Iliescu and others "who, for 11 years, have applied the most barbarian ways to exterminate the Romanian people by starvation and theft of the national patrimony." Despite efforts to distance himself from the openly anti-Semitic and ethnic barbs in his newspapers, his words and those of his supporters come back to haunt him. Romanian satiric newspaper Catavencu recently dug into the archives of a journal run in the early 1990s by Ilie Neacsu, one of Tudor"s deputies, in which Jews are blamed for spreading homosexuality and lesbianism in the United States. "David"s star will vanish from Romania"s territory," a 1991 issue of the journal Europa is quoted as saying. "This is not an anti-Semitic country but there are anti-Semites who want to destroy us," said one prominent member of the Romanian Jewish community, who asked not to be named. "Unfortunately...if we point a finger at Tudor and call him an anti-Semite we do nothing but a favour to him."




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Panayote Elias Dimitras
Spokesperson
Greek Helsinki Monitor
e-mail: panayote@greekhelsinki.gr

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