Landslide election win for Ponta's USL alliance
Monday 10 December 2012
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EmailRomania's centre-left government won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, official results showed today.
With 96 per cent of the votes counted, Prime Minister Victor Ponta's USL alliance had taken 60 per cent of the lower house and 60 per cent of the Senate.
But President Traian Basescu, whose right-wing ARD alliance received less than 17 per cent of the vote in both chambers, has indicated that he won't appoint Mr Ponta as PM.
The two have been bitter rivals since the USL attempted to impeach Mr Basescu for overstepping his powers in July.
Mr Ponta said that he had proposed talks with the ethnic Hungarian UDMR - which won 5 per cent of the vote - and would potentially give the USL the two-thirds requried to amend Romania's constitution.
The PM also insisted that there will be no renewed attempt to impeach the president before his term expires in 2014.
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