The roads within the coronary heart of Bucharest had been swaying. Individuals had been singing, laughing, and searching up at a balcony, ready for the following president to seem.
In the long run, he took to the road, strolling alongside the pavement, high-fiving everybody inside attain.
After a marketing campaign filled with rancour and division, Nicosur Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician, lastly appeared like he was having fun with life.
His victory was extra complete than most had predicted. Per week in the past, the favorite to win this election was his rival, the populist George Simion, however Dan regularly rose within the polls.
Please use Chrome browser for a extra accessible video participant
3:17
Professional-Western candidate wins in Romania
Among the many crowd, there was a way that some had voted as a result of they needed him to win, and others had backed him as a result of they did not like Mr Simion’s Donald Trump-inspired model of strongman management. Some even felt it introduced again reminiscences of the brutal communist previous that when cowed this nation.
“I have felt overwhelmed and scared,” stated Nicoletta. “For the last couple of weeks we lived in terror of returning to something we had to live with for 45 years.”
Alongside her was Ada – one in every of many, many younger voters I met within the crowd. She instructed me she felt like she was “dreaming”, after waking up within the morning “worried that the nightmare would not finish”.
However now, she was thrilled – satisfied that Mr Dan can reinvigorate his nation: “We put our trust in him because we don’t want to leave the country – we are Romanians by home, we feel Romanian, we think Romanian.”
There have been many flags right here with the blue and yellow of the European Union – few doubt that Mr Dan had extra affection for the EU than Mr Simion.
I met a pair who had each draped themselves in EU flags and instructed me that “we hope we will be going the European way”.
One other couple instructed me that they had been terrified that Mr Simion would take Romania out of the EU – a declare he flatly denied after I met him the day earlier than the election.
Please use Chrome browser for a extra accessible video participant
5:25
‘We’re fed up with politically right folks’
We had spoken to Mr Simion earlier within the day, when he appeared quietly assured of victory.
“People are fed up with normal politicians,” he instructed me within the shadow of Bucharest’s huge parliament – the most important constructing in Europe.
A landslide, he felt certain, was on the best way.
Round him had been populist politicians and activists from all over the world – together with Britain, America, Italy, France, Poland and the Netherlands.
They cheered him, and agreed that victory was within reach. After which got here the exit ballot, and the realisation that the momentum of his dominant triumph within the first spherical of this election had light.
Nonetheless, Mr Simion insisted he would win, naming himself because the Romanian president on Fb.
It was solely within the small hours that Mr Simion admitted that he had been crushed by 1,000,000 votes, rising to declare that he would maintain combating.
“I will be there in all of the battles we have ahead of us – this work is just starting and I will be there with every one of you,” he stated, punching the air earlier than strolling off.
He desires to stay the chief for, as he places it, “patriots, sovereignists and conservatives” who wish to return to “democracy and common sense”.
Romania has had a turbulent six months, beginning with the choice to cancel the final presidential election due to suspected Russian interference, after which to ban Calin Georgescu, the person who allegedly benefited from that Moscow grasp plan.
Even a few of Mr Georgescu’s most avowed opponents felt uneasy that an election had been cancelled in that method.
Then the schism between the politics of Mr Simion and Mr Dan break up the nation, as did the lingering sense that Romanian democracy was underneath scrutiny.
So now the problem is to unite and heal this nation – a strategically essential member of each the EU and NATO.
And that’s Mr Dan’s most rapid problem. As he was absorbing the cacophony and affection final evening, a gaggle of his supporters had been opening champagne and pouring out glasses on the street, toasting their new president.
Comply with The World
Hearken to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim each Wednesday
Faucet to observe
For Mr Dan, victory is a superb achievement, but when he’s to reach this job, he’ll want many extra nice achievements forward.
To win is one factor; to prosper is sort of one other.
