December 12 (SeeNews) - Romania's national liberal party (PNL) leader Alina Gorghiu said on Monday she is resigning after the right-wing party failed to win the parliamentary elections the previous day.
“I had a discussion with other party leaders and I informed them that there is no other option but to submit my resignation as president of the party. It was an honour for me to be the leader of this party two years," Gorghiu told a news conference broadcast by local TV station Digi 24. "I assure you that PNL is a strong party which will get over this unwanted result. Moreover, other leaders in the party will also resign."
Right-wing PNL will be the second biggest party in parliament after winning 20.29% support for the Chamber of Deputies and 20.41% for the Senate, preliminary results of the central electoral commission, BEC, indicated on Monday.
PNL suffered a massive blow to its image when at the end of September its co-leader Vasile Blaga was indicted on charges of influence peddling and had to resign to meet PNL's integrity criteria enforced at end-2015. However, following that moral cleansing, many members were forced to leave PNL, so the party found itself lacking popular figures at both local elections in June and general elections on Sunday.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) won the elections, receiving 46.18% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 45.77% of the ballots for the Senate, BEC data showed.
Speaking shortly after the release of the first exit polls, PSD leader Liviu Dragnea said that his party would join forces in parliament with centre-right Liberal-Democrat Alliance (ALDE) led by Senate chairman and former premier Calin Popescu-Tariceanu.
ALDE won 5.7% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 6.5% of the votes for the Senate, which makes it the fifth biggest party in Romania's new parliament, according to BEC data based on 99% of the ballots cast.
Dragnea declined to say who would be the PSD's nominee for prime minister. Dragnea himself cannot take the post as he has a two-year suspended jail sentence for a referendum fraud in 2012.
Centre-right Save Romania Union (USR) party came in third with 8.87% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 8.82% for the Senate.
The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) garnered 6.35% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 6.26% of the votes for the Senate.
Centre-right Popular Movement Party (PMP) got 5.4% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 5.6% for the Senate, respectively, while far-right United Romania Party (PRU) and nationalist party Our Alliance Romania (ANR) could not pass the 5% barrier to enter parliament.
Turnout was 39.49%, BEC said late on Sunday. It was 56.75% in the cities and 43.25% in rural areas.
Some 18.29 million citizens were eligible to vote in the third parliamentary elections after Romania's accession to the European Union in 2007 and the eighth since the fall of Communism in 1989. A total of 6,000 candidates were running for the 466 seats in parliament.
At the December 11 elections, Romanians voted on lists compiled by political parties in a proportional representation system last used in 2004, as opposed to uni-nominal majority voting used in 2012. For the first time Romanians abroad were able to vote by sending their ballot papers by post.