Romanian legislative election, 1948
Romanian general election, 1948
|
|
|
|
| All 414 seats to the Great National Assembly |
| |
Majority party |
Minority party |
| |
 |
|
| Leader |
Petru Groza |
Petre Bejan |
| Party |
FDP |
PNL-Bejan |
| Leader's seat |
Cluj County |
|
| Seats won |
405 |
7 |
| Seat change |
 58 |
4 |
| Popular vote |
6,959,936 |
212,438 |
| Percentage |
93.22% |
2.80% |
| Swing |
23.42 |
 1.00 |
|
|
|
First page of
Monitorul Oficial, official government gazette, having a Democratic People's Front ad
Parliamentary elections were held in Romania on 28 March 1948.[1] They were the first elections held under undisguised Communist rule; King Michael had been forced to abdicate in December.[2]
With all meaningful opposition having been eliminated, the People's Democratic Front, dominated by the Communist Romanian Workers Party (as the Communist Party had been renamed after merging with the Social Democrats)[2] received 93.2% of the vote[3] and won 405 of the 414 seats in the Great National Assembly.[4]
The Communists had spent the previous two years after the rigged elections of 1946 consolidating their control. The turning point came in the second half of 1947, with the elimination of the largest remaining true opposition parties in the country. The National Peasants' Party was banned outright, while the National Liberal Party was intimidated into dissolving itself (though rump Liberal and Peasant parties appeared on the ballot). The National Peasants' leaders, Iuliu Maniu and Ion Mihalache, were tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the government in the Tămădău Affair, and were both sentenced to life imprisonment. On 30 December Prime Minister Petru Groza and Communist Party boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej confronted Michael and forced him to abdicate. Romania was proclaimed a "people's republic" that day. This election thus marked the culmination of the Communists' four-year drive from being a banned party with fewer than 1,000 members to complete power.[5]
This would be the last election in Romania where opposition parties were even nominally allowed to take part until the fall of Communism. Soon after the election, all parties outside the Front were banned, though the country had effectively been a one-party state since December.
Results
| Party |
Votes |
% |
Seats |
|---|
| People's Democratic Front[a] | 6,959,936 | 93.22 | 405 |
| National Liberal Party–Bejan | 212,438 | 2.8 | 7 |
| Democratic Peasants' Party–Lupu | 50,532 | 0.7 | 2 |
| Independent candidates | 245,635 | 3.3 | 0 |
| Invalid/blank votes | 192,490 | – | – |
| Total | 7,661,031 | 100 | 414 |
| Registered voters/turnout | 8,399,416 | 91.2 | – |
| Source: Nohlen & Stöver |
a Within the People's Democratic Front, the Romanian Workers Party won 190 seats, the Ploughmen's Front won 126, the National Popular Party won 43, the Hungarian People's Union won 30, the Jewish Democratic Committee won five and Romanian Workers Party-affiliates won eleven.[6]
References