Basescu Says PSD Stole 5% From Him

The PNL-PD Alliance believes that frauds were committed during the local elections held in Bucharest last Sunday. Traian Basescu, who was reelected mayor of Bucharest on Sunday, accuses PSD of having stolen five percent of the total number of ballots from him. He told a press conference yesterday that this was the only possible explanation for the difference between official figures announced by The Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) and exit polls, whose error margin was one percent. Basescu believes that the fraud is all the more obvious because the official percentages scored by PSD's mayoral candidate Mircea Geoana and candidates for aldermen did coincide with exit polls. An argument backing the Alliance's standpoint is that official BEC data contradicts not one, but two similar exit polls. "Had it not been for these preliminary results, the number of stolen votes would have been much larger," PD chairman Traian Basescu added. He believes that the main method of fraud was to nullify valid ballots in favor of the Alliance.

• PNL-PD Alliance Turns To PUR And PRM For Help

The PNL-PD Alliance is asking PUR and PRM to join it in its battle against PSD for seats in county and local councils. According to the latest information released by BEC, the Alliance did not manage to obtain the majority necessary for full control over local administration. Alliance leaders Traian Basescu and Theodor Stolojan are therefore having negotiations with PRM and PUR. The two of them believe that only by accepting the offer that the Alliance is making them can these parties prove that they are not under PSD's influence in any way. "The outcome of the recent elections has proven that PNL-PD is the only credible alternative to the incumbent administration," said Stolojan. The PNL chairman believes that voters have already understood that.

• PRM And PUR Need To Make Their Choice

"At national level, offices in the administration will be divided proportionally to the number of votes everybody got," said Traian Basescu explaining how the deals with the two parties would work. Basescu's Alliance partner Stolojan elaborated on the idea saying that, upon making their choice, PRM and PUR would have to consider the fact that PNL-PD was going to win the general elections this fall with a much better score than it did the local elections. The Liberal leader further said that he did not expect the number of PUR and PRM constituents to experience any spectacular chances by fall.

On the same occasion, Basescu said he wanted to check public spending by Bucharest sectorial mayors and asked PRM and PUR for support in this respect. "If we manage to carry out these audits, PSD will have a very unpleasant moment," he warned.

The results of the election of county aldermen - a component of the local elections that best represents the voters' political options - indicate that the Alliance outranked PSD, scoring a bit over PSD's 32.68 percent. Thus, PNL's 15.93 percent plus PD's 12.79 percent, cumulated with the joint PNL-PD score of 5.13 percent in Cluj and Bucharest, exceed PSD's overall score by half a percent. BEC released this data after centralizing ballots cast in 16,513 of the 16,639 ballot stations across the country. In the battle for county council seats, the rest of the parties did as follows: PRM - eight percent, PUR - six percent, UDMR - 5.7 percent, PNTCD - 1.9 percent, PNG - 1.9 percent, The Ecologist Party - 1.2 percent, PUNR - 1.25 percent. BEC has calculated the turnout at 54.23 percent of the total number of registered voters.