Centre-left PSD set to fall short of majority, with Save Romania Union poised to step in as junior partner in new coalition

Romanians go to the polls on Sunday to elect a government, with the centre-left PSD party projected to win the most seats but fall short of a majority, leaving it vulnerable to a rival coalition involving a new anti-corruption party.

After a year of cautious caretaker rule by technocrats since massive street protests over the deaths of 64 people in a Bucharest nightclub fire forced the former PSD regime from power, the dominant party of Romanian politics has topped all recent polls.

But a new party, the Save Romania Union (USR), founded barely six months ago to fight the corruption, cronyism and inefficiency endemic in Romanian public life since the overthrow of the Ceaușescu dictatorship in 1989, could spoil the celebrations.

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Polls have credited the USR, led by the mathematician and former civic activist Nicușor Dan, with between 8% and 19% of the vote, which could make it the junior partner in a new coalition with the centre-right PNL, on 18-27%, perhaps lined up behind the outgoing caretaker prime minister, Dacian Cioloș.

A survey last week put the Social Democrats – who have governed the country in assorted coalitions for 17 of the 27 years since the fall of communism – on 43% of the national vote, with their liberal ALDE allies on 6%.

PSD, which has promised to boost social spending and reintroduce progressive taxation in place of an unpopular flat-rate income tax, won more than half the posts in June’s mayoral elections in towns and villages around the country, and has a clear organisational advantage.

“They are an extremely powerful political machine,” said one analyst, Cristian Pătrăşconiu. “They have half the mayors in Romania, three-quarters of the county councils, and a robust structure of power across the country.”

PSD had already begun reversing hugely unpopular austerity programmes before it was forced to resign in October last year after being blamed for the years of official graft and inaction that many Romanians felt lay behind the nightclub fire.

Romania, an enthusiastic EU member for a decade and a major recipient of EU funds, remains one of Europe’s most corrupt countries: a report by the IPP thinktank last week found that of the 588 MPs elected at the last poll in 2012, 89 – or 15% – were either under investigation for graft, had already been convicted, or chose to step down for other positions.

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Whichever party wins on Sunday must walk a budgetary tightrope. Romania’s economy is growing strongly at about 5% year on year, but average take-home pay is low at barely €420 (£353) a month.

The incoming government will need to find a way to balance an urgent need for investment in neglected infrastructure against huge popular pressure for increases to wages and pensions.

Cioloș, a former EU agriculture commissioner who has led the country’s technocratic government for the past 12 months, told Reuters last month that the next government should first approve a new public sector wage scheme aimed at evening out major inequalities and raising average wages by 34%.

Other top priorities were encouraging young Romanian medical graduates to stay in the country (there are now more Romanian doctors in France than in Romania), and encouraging teachers and other public sector employees to move to some of the country’s most disadvantaged areas, Cioloș said.

The PSD leader, Liviu Dragnea, has said he plans to prepare 200 state-owned companies for privatisation, boost the national minimum wage, introduce tax incentives for families whose children attend school regularly, and invest heavily in the national health service, including a big new teaching hospital in Bucharest and eight new regional centres.

But Cioloș warned all parties against making unsustainable promises that he said would inevitably end up increasing voter resentment and fuelling populism. “Many parties are making some of the same economic policy proposals and promises they made four, eight years ago that have not been enforced,” he said.

“It is clear they are unrealistic proposals that aim to get people’s attention and votes. In the future, parties need to do more to boost the trust of voters who want Romanian society and institutions to reform.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicusor Dan records a campaign message at the USR headquarters in Bucharest. Photograph: Inquam Photos/Reuters

The man who may make up the numbers

Dan, a 46-year-old mathematician and conservation activist turned party leader, hopes Sunday’s parliamentary elections will represent a turning point for the country’s political scene.

Polls suggest his USR party could take a significant share of the vote, its message of greater governmental accountability and transparency striking a chord in a country beset by political scandals, corruption and a lack of confidence in traditional parties.

The party is tiny – it has just 15 paid staff and a few thousand volunteers – but has big ambitions. “We believe we can be kingmakers,” Dan told the Guardian recently. “If not, we will be the opposition.”

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The mathematics researcher at the Romanian Academy, whose profile has risen on the back of regular TV and media appearances, has twice run for mayor of Bucharest. In 2012, Dan stood as an independent on a narrow platform of preserving historic buildings and defending green spaces from urban developers, winning 8.5% of the vote. This year, as the head of a party he founded called the Save Bucharest Union, and running on a broader anti-corruption platform, he finished second with more than 30% of the vote.

The USR, whose candidates include academics, people from the private sector and a handful of former ministers, hopes to provide a strong new political voice. “This is the first authentic grassroots movement that has the chance to breach parliament,” said Tudor Benga, an e-commerce entrepreneur and USR candidate for the Transylvanian city of Brasov.

“They can get seats,” said Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, a Romanian political scientist, who thinks 10% is an attainable target. “There is sheer desperation among many voters. People don’t know USR, but there is an anti-system mood in Romania and people are willing to overlook the makeshift nature of the party.”

The party says it intends to back Cioloș, the independent politician who took over as interim prime minister in November 2015, and the party’s success in part depends on this gamble. “We could have a selfish approach, saying we are against all other political parties, that they are all corrupt and the same, which they’re not, and we could probably get more seats,” said Dan, who balances charisma with the cautious studiousness of an academic. Supporting Cioloș would lead to the best outcome for Romania, he added.

“We can’t compete with the main parties at the level of structure, that’s obvious, but there has been a wait for a change in society, and I think we are the party [people] have been waiting for,” he said. Kit Gillet