Romania's neo-stalinists are set to go into coalition with the far right after an unexpectedly strong showing in last week's elections.
Preliminary results give the Democratic National Salvation Front 28 per cent of parliamentary vote. The party is built around the remnants of the old state apparatus of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was toppled in the revolution of December 1989.
The main opposition, the 18-party Democratic Convention (DC), won 27 per cent on an explicit free market platform and 'a clean break with communism'. It has the support of most of Romania s ethnic Hungarians, intellectuals and the middle classes.
The Front is now well placed to seek co-operation with the Socialist Labour Party and the openly anti-semitic and xenophobic nationalists in Romania Mare.
In the presidential elections, the Front's candidate, sitting president lon Iliescu won 48 per cent of an early official return, against 30 percent for DC's Emil Constantinescu. Two years ago, lliescu took 85 per cent of the poll.
Radical nationalist Georghe Funar took 12.3 per cent, with three minor candidates. A French-style run off between the top two candidates is scheduled for October 11.
The Democratic National Salvation Front has secured widespread support among sections of working class and the peasantry that have most to lose from a return to capitalism. Yet it too is overtly restorationist, albeit advocating a slower pace of change.
Under lliescu, privatisation of state enterprises has already begun, and prices allowed to rise by 800 per cent. A million people have lost their jobs over the last two years. There is nothing for workers to choose between either camp.
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