Social Democrat Party Candidates Still Vying for Places on Lists

The coming of the first ever Social Democrat Party (SDP) primaries for the general elections in the fall still grips the over 1,000 candidates who vie for the party electoral lists. They still wait for their candidacies to be checked over by both the SDP top leadership and the newly formed Council for moral integrity, according to criteria set forth.

This is why all bets are out and many now-candidates might find out next week that their efforts to get into the race for a place on the lists for the future parliament came to nothing. The SDP warned Friday that the Coordinating Bureau "reserves the right to take appropriate action when it will find the requirements for the primaries were not met."

The lists of candidates as approved by local party subsidiaries to enter the primaries were to be posted on the Internet today. Dan Nica, the SDP campaign manager, stated Saturday to BBC that checking the lists would take place in the following week. When asked about the well-known names of the SDP who are notably absent from the current lists, Nica said it was "hard" for him to name names, as he did not go over all the 1,000 names on the lists. But, Nica said, "a little more than half of the incumbent parliamentarians are on the lists for the primaries." He did not say, however, if people as Culita Tarata, Serban Mihailescu or Hildegard Puwak [prominent SDP members with a heavy record of political scandals] made it on the lists.

As for the potential candidacy of President Ion Iliescu on the SDP lists for the Senate, Nica said this would not be subjected to the competition process in the primaries. The campaigning inside the SDP ranks for the primaries started on Saturday and will end on September 4, with the final voting taking place on September 5.