Introduction to Political Communication

January 7th

The main campaigns were those of the Democratic Convention candidate and the PDSR
candidate.
There was still a need to remind the public that CD was structured not around some very
clearly defined political objectives, but rather they were defined against something:
anticommunism.
Emil Constantinescu – even if the public was not so interested in being anticommunist, it
was believed that this was the idea to build your campaign around.
The public did not really care about the idea of (anti)communism. In 1992, the
government was a coalition one: PDSR, FSN, Worker’s Socialist Party and PRM: The Red
Rectangle (a conservative government from a leftist point of view) => the public was not
anti-left oriented or anti-communist oriented. Nevertheless, even in the odds were in
favour of Ion Iliescu and his party, we have for the first time not an overall vote in his
favour, but a two rounds scrutiny. His campaign was mainly a continuity one. The theme
of peace and tranquility from 1990 was lost.
Emil Constantinescu had as a main theme hope (the second most used campaign theme
– fear being the first). EC had a small amount of fear-oriented messages – from his point
of view, the larger public was extremely inclined to see private property as a form of
insecure future. On the other hand, Romanian capital was not discussed, so the idea was
what would a foreign investor do in Romania. Therefore, the slogan: “we will not sell our
country”.

Direct participation in rallies whenever possible, with the advantage of allowing the
direct communication between the candidate and the electorate.
The use of free press (as in articles you do not have to pay for) was also extremely
frequent, so what we had were lots of newspaper articles concerning the candidates,
most of which were opinion articles that were not in favour of Ion Iliescu. However, the
audio-visual was mostly in favour of the candidates.
The official journals of some parties, e.g. Dreptatea (PNT), Azi (PDSR) & Dimineata (FSN).

The big movement remains that of 1996.

PNL – PNL (aripa tanara) + PL 93 (Dinu Patriciu + NPL (New) + ANL (National Liberal
Alliance) + UFD (Uniunea Fortelor de Dreapta – Vosganian)
USD (Petre Roman) – PD + PSDR

Petre Roman:
- 1991 – Prime Minister
- 1996 – 22%
- 2000 – 2%
- 2004 – 0.2%

1996 – 32 presidential candidates (among which Petre Roman, Ion Iliescu, Emil
Constantinescu)
Petre Roman did not manage the second tour. As a message, it had no distinct
personality, it was very person-oriented.
In the elections in 1996, for the first time, Ion Iliescu was challenged by someone that
could claim the legitimacy of revolution as well, because Petre Roman was an important
figure of the Revolution himself, and such one of Iliescu’s main assets was modified this
way.
The political offer was not that different from the social democrats’ and PDSR.

General context between 1992-1996:

- Unemployment
- Inflation
- General feeling of discontent among the population towards the leading party.
The party’s image had begun to fail and its members were considered corrupted.
- The image of the “poor and honest”
 - The opposition had two major candidates: Petre Roman and Emil Constantinescu .
- From the media point of view, we have two major elements. For the first time, we
have on a national level two private TV stations (1994 – Antena 1; 1995 – PRO
TV), so antenna time was bought with private money and was unlimited.

Ion Iliescu’s campaign was odd: it was a three phase campaign that is a building-up
campaign as if we were talking about someone the public had no idea who he was. The
first phase is “Iliescu, the ordinary citizen” – ordinary family man, struggling for his
everyday problems and at the same time being concerned about the public problems.
The second phase is “Iliescu, the citizen in politics”- referring to his political youth in
communism – a thin and ill-represented phase. The third phase is “Iliescu, the president”
– the most obvious one; it depicted him in various presidential situations; it was hard to
use the international image, because it was rather poor, therefore the legitimacy given
by other heads of state could not be used, so the campaign was focused mainly on the
idea of an honest president, preoccupied by the future of his country. The problem was
that this campaign was built as a rather inflexible one. Therefore, when the opinion polls
showed there was a problem with the main party’s image, and thus the president could
suffer by association, we had two major collapses in the campaign. After the first tour,
there was a really big effort of dissociating Ion Iliescu’s image from the party image and
he was presented not surrounded by his fellow party members, but rather alone, working
for Romania’s good. Afterwards, the negative campaign began, which was exclusively
fear-oriented, but they tried to explore the same fear as in 1992, and the society had
change. However, it was too late. There was also no response from the other side,
because Constantinescu considered that the accusations were so futile that there was no
response to that negative campaign.
What we have for the first time is the use of what was initially innovated in the US in the
Clinton campaign and it was a contract with Romania. It was structured in ten points that
were addressing the main concerns of the Romanians at that time. The fact that it was
conceived in a contractual form gave the idea of an abiding document, but such a legal
concept does not exist. This contract was just an empty shell, because it had no legal
power, so the candidates were not obliged to comply with the articles of the document.
However, this contract with Romania was considered a success. The problem was
afterwards, because the expectations were so high that the disenchantment was also
high. Constantinescu was not unknown to the public, but even if he was now chief of the
opposition, that did not mean very much from a political point of view. The main
difference between him and Iliescu was the very good international image, which helped
him gain international legitimacy. There was also an emulation of the Uncle Sam poster
in America, with the slogan “Schimbarea in bine, schimbarea pentru tine”. There are
rallies, concerts, testimonials. There were two foreign counselors.

In the coalition, there were a lot of problems. The democrat party led the coalition and
they considered there was a huge problem with the country. There were three PMs:
Victor Ciorbea, Radu Vasile, Mugur Isarescu. Also, Constantinescu did not participate in
another election in 2000.

The beginning of the lack of interest in politics. After 1996, the turnout is getting lower
and lower. We originally have 16 candidates. And we have a campaign in which there are
no direct debates and Iliescu almost does not acknowledge the existence of CV Tudor as
a rival. CV Tudor lost a part of his supporters due to his change of discourse mid-
campaign. Iliescu was also trusted more and many went to vote against CV Tudor. The
fact that Iliescu refused a debate with CV Tudor was a very smart move, because
although he might not say what some people wanted to hear, CV Tudor was a much
better debater than Iliescu. The fact that Iliescu was the first to address the public gave
CV Tudor the advantage to know how to counterargument his speech. We do not have
impressive video because Iliescu did not want to throw more money on a campaign he
knew he had already won, preferring instead to keep the distance from the corrupt party.
On the other hand, CV Tudor did not have the means to produce the videos, but he had
the monopole on nationalistic symbols. However, the message did not bring anything
new.
!!!The main messages from the 2004 campaign: alliances and PSD!!! Compare
the messages of Traian Basescu as mayor with the messages of Traian Basescu
as president.