History of Romania Since 1989 - 1990 - 1996

1996

See also: Ethnic clashes of Târgu Mureş, Golaniad, and Mineriad

In the aftermath of the revolution, several parties which claimed to be successors of pre-World War II parties were formed. The most successful were the Christian-Democratic National Peasants' Party, the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Romanian Social Democrat Party (PSDR). Their leadership was made of former political prisoners of the 1950s, repatriated émigrés and people which had not been affiliated with the Communist Party. As a reaction, the FSN declared it would participate in the elections as a political party. The announcement triggered a series of anti-government demonstrations in Bucharest. The already tense situation was aggravated by press campaigns. The newspapers, assuming either a strong pro-government or strong pro-opposition stance, issued attacks and tried to discredit the opposing side. The FSN, having a better organisational structure, and controlling the state administration, used the press still controlled by the state in its own advantage. FSN also organised counter-manifestations, gathering the support of the blue-collar workers in the numerous factories of Bucharest. As the anti-government protesters started to charge the Parliament, more groups of workers from around the country poured into Bucharest to protect the fragile government. The most notable among these groups where the coal miners of the Jiu Valley, known in Romania for their 1977 strike against the Ceauşescu regime. The workers attacked the offices of opposition parties, however the government intervened and succeeded in re-establishing the order. These event were to be known as the first Mineriad.

On February 28, less than a month later, another anti-government demonstration in Bucharest ended again with a confrontation between demonstrators and coal miners. This time, despite the demonstrators' pleas for non-violence, several people started throwing stones at the Government building. Riot police and army forces intervened to restore order, and on the same night, 4,000 miners rushed into Bucharest. This incident is known as the Mineriad of February 1990.

Presidential and parliamentary elections were held on May 20, 1990. Iliescu won with almost 90% of the popular vote and thus became the first elected President of Romania. The FSN also secured more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Petre Roman, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, son of Communist official and veteran of the Spanish Civil War. The new government, which included some former low-key members of the Communist party, promised the implementation of some free market reforms.

During the spring 1990 electoral campaign, the opposition parties organised a massive sit-in protest in down-town Bucharest, later known as the Golaniad. After the FSN won an overwhelming majority, most of the Bucharest protesters dispersed, however less than a hundred chose to remain in the square. The police efforts to evict them and re-establish traffic in central Bucharest two weeks after the elections was met with violence, and several state institutions were attacked (among them the Bucharest Police and the Interior Ministry). The freshly elected president, Ion Iliescu, issued a call to Romania's population to come and defend the government from further attacks. The main group to answer the call were the coal miners of Jiu Valley, leading to the June 1990 Mineriad. The miners physically confronted the demonstrators and forcefully cleared University Square. After the situation calmed down, president Iliescu publicly thanked the miners for their help in restoring the order in Bucharest, and requested their return to the Jiu Valley. The general national and international media portrayal of the miners involvement in these events have been disputed by the miners, who claimed that most of the violence was perpetrated by government agents that were agitating the crowds; these claims, and a growing public suspicion of the sequence and orchestration of events, led to Parliamentary and other inquiries. Parliamentary inquiries showed that members of the government intelligence services were involved in the instigation and manipulation of both the protesters and the miners, and later, in June 1994, a Bucharest court found two former Securitate officers guilty of ransacking and stealing $100,000 from the house of a leading opposition politician.

In December 1991, a new constitution was drafted and subsequently adopted, after a popular referendum. March 1992 marked the split of the FSN into two groups: the Democratic National Salvation Front (FDSN), led by Ion Iliescu and the Democrat Party (PD), led by Petre Roman. Iliescu won the presidential elections in September 1992 by a clear margin, and his FDSN won the general elections held at the same time. With parliamentary support from the nationalist National Unity Party of Romanians (PUNR), Greater Romania Party (PRM), and the ex-communist Socialist Workers' Party (PSM), a new government was formed in November 1992 under Prime Minister Nicolae Văcăroiu, an economist and former bureaucrat during the Ceauşescu administration. The government took some limited steps towards the liberalisation of the market, started a privatisation program through management employee buyouts and sought to further relations with the Euro-Atlantic structures (the EEC/EU and the NATO). The FDSN changed its name to Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR) in July 1993 after the merger with several smaller parties. This coalition dissolved before the November 1996 elections. This coincided with the bankruptcy of the Caritas pyramid scheme, a major scandal at the time in Romania.