December 03, 2004
Election results (2)
We have some more solid election results today. Verdict: it looks like Romania's present government will just barely squeak back in.
Here are the results as of this morning:
Chamber of Deputies
PSD/PUR 132
Alliance 112
PRM 48
UDMR 22
Minorities 18
Total 332 -- 167 required for a majority
You may recall from my last post on this topic that PSD/PUR is the current governing party, while the Alliance is the opposition. UDMR is the Hungarians, while PRM is the obnoxious xenophobic nationalist-populist party.
PSD/PUR plus UDMR = 154 members, 13 short of a majority. The Alliance plus PRM have 160, 7 members short of a majority. (Of course, the Alliance has always said that they wouldn't join with PRM anyhow.)
But then there are those minority members. Under Romanian law, certain ethnic minority groups are guaranteed representation in Parliament. These include Germans, Gypsies, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Turks and Armenians, along with some more obscure groups like Aromanians and Lipovans. Each of these groups gets at least one member in the Chamber of Deputies, and there are 18 of them altogether.
So that's where the government will go to get its majority. This may involve some odd little bargains, but it should be doable.
Senate
PSD/PUR 57
Alliance 49
PRM 21
UDMR 10
Total 137 -- 69 required for a majority
PSD + UDMR = 67, so they fall just short by two senators. PRM + Alliance = 70, which means they could have a majority in this chamber, except of course the Alliance will never etc. etc.
Unlike the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate has no minority members. So the government can't pick up the extra votes there. But all they need in the Senate is to find just two turncoats from the 70 opposition members. Given the resources that PSD can deploy -- they are the government, after all -- they'll very probably be able to to this.
So, it looks like PSD/PUR and UDMR will be able to form a government. It'll be a government by a very narrow Parliamentary majority (at least initially... that may change, as members move around), but it will be a government.
Or at least that's how it looks tonight.
Posted by douglas at December 3, 2004 04:51 PM