Elections

Ok, I hate politics. I took one poli sci class at university and somehow managed to graduate with a BA in International Relations.

Romania had the first round of presidential and legislative elections yesterday.

I had two reasons to ignore this election:
a) I hate politics
b) I don't speak Romanian

And two reasons to follow it:
a) I'm living in Romania now
b) We didn't want another Ukraine situation developing here

So yesterday, I went around taking pictures of political posters. I don't know how many candidates were running but the real competition came down between two parties. I like to call them the "blue" party and the "orange" party in reference to their political colours.

I will make this as basic as I can.

The blue party, Social Democratic Party of Romania (Partidul Social Democrat or PSD) is often described as harbouring former communists and attempting to control the Romanian mass-media.

The orange party, the National Liberal and Democratic Party is obviously not very exciting as I can't find much information on them. Seems the presidential contender, the mayor of Bucharest, wants to encourage big business, but as far as I'm aware, he is just as corrupt as anyone else, although he does speak out for gay-rights.

According to my Romanian friends, neither is a good candidate. Kind of reminds me of the Bush-Gore election of 2000, except imagine Bush running against himself.

Timisoara's mayor ran in the election as well, coming in a respectable 5th place (with 1.9% of the votes).

No one person for 50% of the votes, so a run-off is scheduled for December 12th.