Romanian Local Elections 2004 Update by
Romanian and Election Monitoring Organization Pro Democracy Association (PDA)
(summarized and translated by NDI with permission from PDA)
Romanian and Election Monitoring Organization Pro Democracy Association (PDA)
(summarized and translated by NDI with permission from PDA)
June 7, 2004
Over the course of more than 15 years since the first free elections, the Romanian authorities have still been unable to improve the organizational process of elections.
We believe the main cause for this situation is the absence of a Permanent Electoral Authority, which can convene a team of officials specialized in the organization and administration of the electoral process and can maintain institutional capacity from one election to the next.
The founding of this institution in the middle of the campaign period (more than four months after the date the law required) did not occur as a result of an effort to improve the electoral organization, but due to the need to round out the composition of the Central Electoral Bureau with this authority's President and two Vice Presidents.
For the June 6, 2004 local elections, the Pro Democracy Association (PDA) has proposed and received accreditation for 2,488 observers, with whom it covered as many polling stations in 33 judets (counties), 1,505 of which were in rural areas. This is the first time since PDA began observing elections (in February 1992) that the Association has concentrated the majority of its monitoring efforts in rural areas.
We can affirm without a doubt that from the organizational perspective the first round of the local elections in 2004 were marked by serious irregularities. Some of these even indicated apparent fraud and even though this suspicion was disavowed in most locations, it can be concluded that organizational problems should not be tolerated in the future.
As far as irregularities and acts of fraud are concerned, or rather attempts of fraud, and their reportedly large numbers, they do not constitute a system-wide strategy of fraud, at any level. Therefore, technically speaking, we can conclude that these elections fall under the general mode in which elections are usually carried out in Romania.
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You can find more detailed information about observations reported on election day in Romanian on PDA's website at www.apd.ro.
For more information on NDI's work in Romania, please contact Edmund Rhoads in Washington, D.C. at 202-728-5664 or Dana Diaconu at dana.diaconu@ines.ro and Nick Demeter at nick.demeter@ines.ro.
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