Romanian PM resigns after far-right wins first round of president vote

BUCHAREST: Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu resigned on Monday, a day after a far-right opposition leader won the first round of the presidential election re-run and his own candidate crashed out of the race.

Ciolacu said his centre-left Socialists would withdraw from the pro-Western coalition - effectively ending it - while cabinet ministers will stay on in an interim capacity until a new majority emerges after the presidential run-off.

Hard-right eurosceptic George Simion decisively swept the ballot on Sunday, with some 41 percent of votes, and will face Bucharest mayor Nicusor Dan, an independent centrist, in a May 18 run-off. Coalition candidate Crin Antonescu came third. Although Ciolacu’s leftist Social Democrats (PSD) won the most seats in a Dec 1 parliamentary election, Simion’s AUR and two other far-right groupings, one with overt pro-Russian sympathies, won more than a third of the seats to become a clear political force.

The Social Democrats had formed a coalition government with the centrist Liberals and ethnic Hungarian UDMR to help keep the European Union and Nato state on a pro-Western course. A governing majority that cordons off the far right in the legislature cannot be formed without it. “This coalition is no longer legitimate,” Ciolacu told reporters after a party meeting. “The next president was going to replace me anyway, that’s what I’ve read.”