November 23 (SeeNews) - Incumbent centrist Traian Basescu, leading with a thin margin after the first round of Romania's presidential elections, will face Mircea Geoana, leader of the opposition Social Democrat Party, in a run-off vote, partial official results indicated on Monday afternoon.
The winner in the run-off, to be held on December 6, will name the country's next prime minister who will have to restart key reforms of the economy and the justice system in order to win back the trust of international lenders, a key condition for the release of the next installments of a 20-billion euro bailout package led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Basescu, running for re-election, won 32.52% of the votes cast on Sunday, short of the majority of over 50% needed for an outright victory. Geoana trailed close second with 30.77% support based on 96.55% of the votes counted, the Central Electoral Bureau, BEC, said on its website.
The leader of the National Liberal Party, Crin Antonescu, came third with 20.13% of the vote, followed by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the leader of nationalistic PRM party, with 5.52%. Romanians were choosing among 12 candidates for president.
Voter turnout was 54.32%. Some 18.3 million voters were eligible to cast ballots.
BEC would update the partial results again at 2000 local time on Monday.
"Romania urgently needs a government," Basescu said on Sunday night after the voting ended. He said that in the following days he would give priority to the political solutions needed “for a government to be approved by parliament.”
The minority government of Prime Minister Emil Boc fell in a no-confidence vote in October and Basescu, who is banned by law to call early general elections in the last six months of his term, failed to push through parliament his nominations for a new prime minister. Parliament rejected Lucian Croitoru, an advisor to the central bank governor, and has delayed voting on Basescu's second nomination, Liviu Negoita, a mayor of one of the Bucharest districts.
Boc has carried on as leader of an interim cabinet unable to enact cuts in public spending and adopt a credible budget for next year. The political uncertainty made the IMF and the European Commission postpone the payment of the next installments of the 20-billion euro loan package designed to support the country's recession-hit economy.
The capital and foreign exchange markets in Romania both stagnated in October and November in the absence of investors, driven away by the political instability that has stalled reforms. Romania's gross domestic product shrank by 7.4% on the year through September. The country's economy is expected to contract by 7.5%-8.0% this year and to show signs of recovery only next year.
On Sunday Romanians also voted in a referendum on Basescu's proposal to transform the bicameral parliament into a single chamber and cut the number of legislators to 300 from current 471.
Some 77.74% of the voters in the referendum, the results of which are not binding, backed the transformation, and 88.85% supported the proposed cut in the number of MPs, BEC said based on 96.44% of the votes counted. Turnout in the referendum was 50.88%.
Geoana said he voted in favour of the transformation and would respect the voters’ will to cut the number of MPs once he wins the run-off vote.