Romania gains a Lutheran president

A letter from WORLD member Marie Rete:

“We are a subscribing family and enjoy your coverage of world and home news with a Christian perspective. My husband is Romanian and has been glued to the computer on Sunday to watch elections. This weekend was the presidential election in Romania, which was between an old hat Communist/Orthodox and an evangelical with new ideas. Romanians living abroad were able to vote and swayed the vote to the evangelical. I am sure you would find looking into it fascinating.”

Yes, indeed. Klaus Iohannis upset Victor Ponta in Romania’s presidential runoff election Sunday. Ponta, supported by the powerful Romanian Orthodox Church, had mocked the ethnically German, religiously Lutheran Iohannis. The underdog, though, attacked endemic corruption and came away with about 55 percent of the vote.

During his campaign, Iohannis, a 55-year-old physics teacher who has been the mayor of the city of Sibiu since 2000, called Ponta “a candidate of the system, a candidate who is manipulated by local barons. People want something else. People want change.”

On election night, Iohannis told his supporters that Romania’s vote would lead to “deep change” in the country. He promised to crack down on corruption, fight for an independent justice system, push for stronger relations with the West, and oppose any attempt by Parliament to grant amnesties to those serving prison sentences for corruption.

Ponta will stay on as prime minister, at least temporarily, but he will face pressure to resign. In any event, the Romanian president has a dominant role in foreign policy, and Iohannis will push for stronger relations with the West, and with the United States specifically.

Evangelicals in Romania often face discrimination from the Orthodox Church, and many voted for Iohannis. While in Romania in July, I spoke with three evangelical members of Parliament who noted Orthodox attempts to marginalize them by claiming that those who are not Orthodox are not true Romanians. They also spoke positively of the United States and grew up hoping that someday Americans would come and free them from communism—but “you didn’t come.”

What did come: tyranny. What also came: a gargantuan symbol of government run amuck, the Palace of Parliament. At 3.6 million square feet, it is the world’s largest administrative building for civilian use, according to the World Record Academy, and also the world’s heaviest and most expensive administrative building.

Former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu commissioned it, but before completion he ordered his security forces in 1989 to shoot anti-government demonstrators. Many refused, his regime collapsed, and a firing squad shot Ceausescu and his wife on Christmas Day.