Candidates:
Victor Ponta, Prime Minister - the incumbent PM (since 2012) is the candidate of the ruling Social Democrats (PSD) supported the Conservative Party (PC), which is actually the personal machine of oligarch and ex-Securitate asset Dan Voiculescu, and the UNPR, a tiny party by opportunistic PSD-PNL dissidents in 2010 who supported Basescu but who fled back to the PSD as soon as Basescu became a liability. Ponta is a vile bully and wannabe autocrat, but he's not the brightest bulb out there and is also a plagiarist. His political mentor (and doctoral thesis adviser, ie the thesis which he plagiarized) is former PM Adrian Năstase, who is now in jail for corruption (he needed to be literally dragged there because he tried to shoot himself in a theatrical but botched attempt not to go to jail). The PSD is hardly 'left-wing', being in reality a collection of corrupt old communist bosses and Securitate officials, with authoritarian leanings and a tendency to use cheap nationalism for electoral gain. It's debatable whether the PSD has actually become more reformist since the EU accession process or if reforms were deceitful, aimed at tricking the EU into accepting Romania and putting up an outward appearance of change while a corrupt and autocratic elite blocked real change. Ponta has been thoroughly unremarkable as PM - as soon as he got into office, the first order of business was to kick off a Grade 1-level schoolyard brawl with his nemesis, Basescu, and unsuccessfully try to get him impeached on flimsy ground; while at the same time acting like a tinpot autocrat by trying to attack judicial independence (but unlike Orbán he didn't go on to act like a sabre-rattling blowhard when challenged) and reforming the media laws to favour Voiculescu. Ponta does remain the heavy favourite to win, though.
Klaus Iohannis, mayor of Sibiu - an ethnic German (and Protestant, unlike most Romanians), who has been the very popular mayor of Sibiu since 2000. Left the German party in 2013 to join the National Liberal Party (PNL), a right-wing liberal party formerly led by Crin Antonescu, also a tool. The PNL was originally allied to Basescu until they quickly had a falling out in 2007, and gradually moved towards the PNL. In the 2009 presidential election, Antonescu endorsed the PSD's doltish candidate in the runoff, who lost by a hair to Basescu. Iohannis had been nominated by the PSD, PNL and Hungarians to replace Basescu's man as PM if they won the election. The PNL and PSD formed a coalition, the USL, in 2011, which won a massive landslide in 2012 (60% of the vote). Antonescu was supposed to be the USL's presidential candidate, but then the PNL got pissed at the PSD for sidelining it and they left the government in February. Now there's a new alliance, the Christian Liberal Alliance, which includes the PNL, the right-wing Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) - Basescu's former party and the small Civic Force led by former PM Mihai Razvan Ungureanu. He should be the other runoff contender.
Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, former Prime Minister (2004-2008) and President of the Senate - a former PM, from the PNL, during Basescu's first term in office (2004-2009). Originally an ally of Basescu, relations between the two went south as early as 2005 and dismissed the pro-Basescu ministers in 2007, continuing to govern in a minority government until 2008. He is running as an independent (for the unregistered Liberal Reformist Party), having left the PNL in February 2014 after the PNL left the Ponta government/USL (in return, Tăriceanu was elected as President of the Senate with the PSD's support to replace Antonescu); he also opposed the PNL's later alliance with the PDL and departure from the ALDE for the EPP.
Elena Udrea, former Minister of Regional Development and Tourism - Udrea is the candidate of the People's Movement Party (PMP), the new Basescu party. Basescu lost control of the PDL in 2013, when his protege Udrea was defeated in a PDL leadership election by Vasile Blaga, a former president of the Senate who wished to follow a more independent line. After her defeat, Băsescu announced that he was cutting off ties with the PDL and he formed his own party, which has little ideology besides supporting Basescu (who his himself an abrasive "anti-communist" conservative populist who swears like the former sailor he is and attacks opponents in foul-mouthed tirades). The PMP includes some other Basescu loyalists like former foreign minister Teodor Baconschi, former culture minister Theodor Paleologu and Basescu's Paris Hilton-ite showgirl ditzy daughter/former MEP Elena Basescu. Udrea served as a loyal attack dog in the palace for her boss in 2005, and later returned as tourism minister under PM Emil Boc (2008-2012). Basescu got into some hot water when Ponta whined about him wearing a PMP tshirt (which is probably unconstitutional), and Basescu basically told Ponta to go f
[color=black]u[/color]ck himself.
Hunor Kelemen, Minister of Culture - the candidate of the UDMR, the Hungarian minority party. The UDMR doesn't really care about the orientation of the government, meaning that they've participated in both PDL and PSD-led governments - it was in government under Popescu-Tăriceanu (2004-2008), Emil Boc's second minority government (2009-2012, after the PSD left the weird coalition government which Basescu imposed on them in 2008), the stopgap Ungureanu cabinet (2012) and the 3rd Ponta government since earlier this year after the PNL left. Despite this, they've achieved very little - their old pet issue of regional autonomy for the Székely Land has gotten nowhere. They do manage to piss off Romanians when they troll around with saying that they're not Romanians. They have a solid base of 5-7%.
Dan Diaconescu, TV mogul - the leader of the populist People's Party-Dan Diaconescu (PP-DD) and a nutcase who should rather run for president of the local loony bin. He is the owner of the OTV TV channel and the host of his own popular talk-show on OTV, a sensationalist and very populist ‘infotainment’ show (which became famous for presenting the case of a lawyer who disappeared, presumably murdered by her husband). He had begun going after Băsescu in 2010 (after getting arrested for blackmailing a politician - in fact, he announced his presidential candidacy right after he was released), and grandly proclaimed himself (and OTV) to be the messiah and only opponent of Băsescu’s dictatorial-like regime. His going into politics was partly an attempt to escape sanctions for repeated violations of broadcasting rules and tax evasion. His party promised giving €20,000 to Romanians who start a business, raising all salaries and pensions and cutting salaries for MPs and top officials. The PP-DD won about 14% of the vote, but Diaconescu himself was defeated in Ponta's district. He lost interest quickly thereafter and Diaconescu’s OTV was shut down by the National Audiovisual Council in January 2013 after it was showed that OTV had not paid over 1 million lei in fines. Diaconescu was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2013 on the charge of blackmailing a mayor, and OTV briefly linked up with România TV, a channel owned by a PSD deputy. He's an all-around nutcase who won a privatization bid but then couldn't cough up the cash to pay for it, and who is certain that he's the next President because all Presidents' names have ended in 'escu'. The PP-DD has collapsed, its MPs defecting everywhere and the party winning only 3.7% in the EP elections.
Monica Macovei, MEP and former Minister of Justice (2004-2007) - a PDL dissident running as an independent. She's a former prosecutor and activist, who became justice minister after Basescu's election and is credited with the judicial reform, which democratized the justice system and strengthened anti-corruption mechanisms and institutions (such as giving the independent anti-corruption body the power to indict corrupt MPs and officials). She was widely loathed by PSD and PC MPs for being too nosy in corruption business, and even the PDL wasn't overly fond of her (she got trounced in the 2013 leadership election). Close to Basescu, she broke with him when she stayed in the PDL in 2013. She broke with the PDL last month, opposing Iohannis' candidacy.
Corneliu Vadim Tudor, former MEP - an insane lunatic, running for the fifth time for the far-right Greater Romania Party (PRM). He was originally a ‘court poet’ for Ceaușescu, writing sycophantic poetry praising the greatness of Ceaușescu; then became a populist madman spewing crap mixing nostalgia for Ceaușescu’s national communism, praise for wartime pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu, anti-Semitism (although he claims to have moved beyond that), racism/xenophobia (Roma, Hungarians obviously) and irredentism (Greater Romania fantasies). The PRM supported a PSD government from 1992 to 1996, along with other beyond-the-pale crazies. In 2000, the PRM became the second largest party in Parliament and Tudor placed second in the presidential election, with 28% in the first round but losing 67-33 to the PSD's corrupt former second-tier communist apparatchik Ion Iliescu. The PRM won 13% in 2004 and has more or less collapsed since then, with brief upticks in support every now and again. It's mostly down the sh**tter now, though. Gheorghe Funar, another nationalist fruitcake from the 1990s (when he participated in a ponzi scheme), is fighting Tudor for the PRM leadership and is running as an independent.
You also have the usual bunch of also-rans from small parties.
