On October 21, when officially informing of his participation in the presidential race, Romania’s current President Traian Basescu said that he had a programme “which tries to recover what I did not manage to do during my first term in office, a programme in which I need to be able to cooperate with a government, but not with any type of government, it should be one devoting itself to the national interest.”
The presidential programme of candidate Traian Basescu, titled “My Romania,” includes seven sections: confidence and common values; consolidation of the middle class; solidarity for the ones in distress; efficiency in economy; more competitiveness; benefits from the EU and modernization of agriculture and the state.
In his turn Social Democrat candidate Mircea Geoana joined the presidential race on October 2, during the congress of the Social Democratic Party (P SD) and the Conservative Party, an occasion on which he also spoke about his political programme, “One Single Romania.”
The programme consists of five subjects: relaunch of the Romanian economy; regaining confidence in the action taken by the state; development of social Romania; family at the centre of the community; regaining national dignity. On October 24 the PSD leader said in Suceava County (northern Romania) that the solution for Romania in the next 20 years was agriculture.
Liberal leader Crin Antonescu presented his electoral programme on July 13, 2009. Titled “It Is in Our Power to Change Their Power,” his programme is worded as a document meant to offer solutions in the current context of the economic crisis.
The main themes to be found in the presentation of the leader of the National Liberal Party are: economic crisis; reform of the state; Romanian economy; education in the spirit of freedom; foreign policy; national defence and independent justice.
When he officially handed in his candidacy to the Central Electoral Bureau on October 17, Crin Antonescu declared against a “player President” and promised he would be everybody’s President, a President that tells the truth and a “landmark of attaining the great national aims.”
One of the subjects on which the candidates have different opinions is taxation. Thus, if Traian Basescu pleads for sticking to the 16 percent flat tax and a possible increase in the VAT if there is no more money in the budget, Crin Antonescu wants the reduction of the flat tax to 10 percent and the decrease in the VAT to 15 percent, whereas Mircea Geoana agrees to a 20 percent tax for incomes higher than 3,000 lei and a differentiated VAT.
Every one of the three candidates had various economic initiatives. Thus Mircea Geoana suggests the setting up of the Romanian Investment Fund, a sovereign investment fund of the Romanian State for protecting the economic sectors of national importance. This fund would have to take over the entire private property of the state so that any transaction carried out by ministries should be transparent on the capital market. Another initiative of Mircea Geoana’s is to hold a one – year moratorium on paying the loans taken by the SMEs.
Thus, the entrepreneurs will benefit by the extension of the credit period by one year. The maintenance of an attractive fiscal regime, the marked reduction of bureaucracy and the growing absorption of European funds are other priorities of the Social Democrat candidate. According to Mircea Geoana too, the state has to develop a system of granting credits for agriculture, meant to ensure the qualitative and quantitative growth of production.
In his turn Crin Antonescu suggests that the state budget should be oriented to priorities of transparent public policies, in the interest of tax payers, not of the politicians’ clientele. The Government must massively be restructured, the Liberal politician thinking that we do not need more than 12 ministries and 30 governmental agencies. Public expenses must be kept under control much better, including by a regulation that should ensure the transparency of using the money in public works.
Crin Antonescu also pleads for the decrease in the social contribution by up to 50 percent, for reductions between 5 and 10 percent for paying taxes on time; for the stimulation of job creation in underprivileged areas by various packages of fiscal incentives granted to small and medium-sized enterprises. Crin Antonescu also aims at the liberalization of the financial and banking market in order to stimulate the circulation of the capital.
Traian Basescu wants to restructure public expenses and make the use of resources more efficient. The current President is interested in the reform of justice, by simplifying the legislation included. Traian Basescu wants a unicameral Parliament that would thus be more powerful and more transparent.
The independent candidate supported by the Democratic Liberal Party also aims at a deep going and rapid reform of the public administration, which should focus on decentralization and on reducing the bureaucratic apparatus of the state that is oversized nowadays. Traian Basescu insists on the increasing efficiency in using the funds the European Union is going to allocate to Romania over 2014-2020.
A joint suggestion made by the three candidates for the Cotroceni Palace is the preparation for adopting the euro currency by 2014. As far as foreign policy is concerned, in his electoral programme Crin Antonescu declared in favour of founding again the partnership with the United States of America as in July 1997, when the bilateral Strategic Partnership between the US and Romania was launched, Romania aspired both to join the NATO and to get integrated into the European Union. Today, longer than ten years later, Romania is a fully fledged member both of the European Union and the NATO.
The first step of this process is, to the mind of the Liberal leader, is the clarification of the question of entry visas to the United States so that there should be a uniform access regime for all the citizens of the European Union.
In Mircea Geoana’s opinion, in its capacity as an EU member, Romania will have to insist on a stronger commitment of the Union to the Republic of Moldova in order to grant it the European financial assistance. At the same time a priority for our foreign policy must be both the consolidation of the trans-Atlantic relations and adopting again pragmatic relations with the emergent countries, such as China, Russia, India, Brazil.
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