VZCZCXRO5058
RR RUEHIK
DE RUEHBM #0799/01 3360857
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 020857Z DEC 09
FM AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0118
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BUCHAREST 000799 
 
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SIPDIS 
 
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E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PINR RO
SUBJECT: ROMANIA ELECTION UPDATE: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE 
PRESIDENT - WHO IS MIRCEA GEOANA? 
 
REF: BUCHAREST 798 
 
BUCHAREST 00000799  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY.  Though a former Romanian Ambassador to 
Washington and former Foreign Minister, Social Democratic 
Party (PSD) presidential candidate Mircea Geoana has focused 
much more on domestic issues and party politics since 
becoming PSD Chairman in 2005. This cable profiles Geoana,s 
political career, while reftel assessed the foreign policy 
approach of a future Geoana presidency and septel will 
explore the nature of Geoana,s associations with the 
powerful PSD dealmakers and oligarchs who are supposedly 
behind his political rise to power.  END SUMMARY. 
 
GEOANA AND THE PSD 
 
¶2. (SBU) Mircea Geoana first took the stage as a major player 
in Romanian politics in February 1996 when then-President Ion 
Iliescu (PSD) sent him to Washington to represent Romania as 
Ambassador to the United States, where he quickly acquired a 
reputation as a pro-active, effective diplomat.  At 37 Geoana 
was the youngest person ever named ambassador by the Romanian 
government.  When Iliescu was defeated by the center-right 
Emil Constantinescu nine months later, Geoana quickly changed 
horses.  In a congratulatory fax to President-elect 
Constantinescu on election night, which has never been made 
public, Geoana allegedly described Constantinescu,s victory 
as the "triumph of democracy" and expressed his joy at seeing 
Iliescu, the "cancer of Romanian society," gone forever. 
Geoana the politician had been born. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Geoana reinvented himself once more in December 2000 
after the PSD and Iliescu were victorious both in 
parliamentary and presidential elections, somehow convincing 
Iliescu to overlook the past betrayal and name Geoana as 
Foreign Minister.  In 2001 Geoana joined the PSD, having 
previously been barred from party membership as a career 
diplomat.  While Geoana won accolades for his performance as 
the country,s chief diplomat, his first step into electoral 
politics was a flop.  In June 2004, then Prime Minister and 
PSD chairman Adrian Nastase, jealous of Geoana,s rising 
national star, sent him to run against incumbent Bucharest 
Mayor Traian Basescu.  Geoana suffered a humiliating defeat. 
His attempts to pass as a blue collar populist, rubber boots 
and all, running against the flamboyant Traian Basescu who 
had just exploded on the national scene, still elicit smiles. 
 Geoana,s image as a wonkish, ungifted campaigner was born, 
as was his personal dislike and distrust of Traian Basescu. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Geoana survived this first bruising experience with 
real politics.  After Nastase lost the presidency to Basescu 
in December 2004 and the party went into opposition, PSD 
strategists realized they needed to shed their reputation for 
corruption which polling showed had lost them the elections. 
After Geoana gave a fiery, pro-reform speech at the PSD 
convention, both reformists and old-guard party leaders (even 
Nastase) saw Mircea Geoana as the perfect vehicle.  The 
reformists hoped Geoana could truly help modernize the party; 
the old guard bet that they could use him as a front to erase 
the corruption label without giving up any real power. 
Geoana became party chairman, while Nastase was named 
"executive chairman" and PSD stalwart Miron Mitrea secretary 
general.  Geoana promised to be a "good listener" and a "team 
player." 
 
¶5. (SBU) Geoana,s efforts at a party makeover in 2005 had 
more to do with changing the party,s image with the outside 
world than with any meaningful reforms.  The Revolution of 
the Good, a reformist petition drive aimed at controlling the 
political elite by switching to a unicameral Parliament and a 
single-mandate electoral system went nowhere.  The local, 
mostly rural chapters of the post-communist party could not 
relate to - much less identify with - their new chairman, a 
self-described "Third Way Social Democrat" who quoted from 
British PM Blair,s adviser Anthony Giddens.  Politicians and 
pundits alike soon began to make bets as to how long Geoana 
would survive as national chairman. 
 
¶6. (SBU) After the National Anti-Corruption Department (DNA) 
launched a high-profile corruption investigation against 
former PM Nastase, Geoana forced Nastase to resign his 
positions as PSD executive chairman and Chamber of Deputies 
Speaker.  Nastase then joined Iliescu as the leaders of an 
anti-Geoana, anti-reform camp within PSD.  Geoana managed to 
hold on to his position as PSD national chairman at an 
emergency convention called in December 2006, but only by 
agreeing to cede power to local party bosses and abandon any 
plans for reform.  The Party's decentralized decision-making 
brought the local bosses into the national party leadership. 
 
BUCHAREST 00000799  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
Geoana justified his capitulation by saying that the time had 
come to prepare for the next elections, rather than focus on 
reform.  He also moved to reconcile with former President 
Iliescu, naming him the party,s honorary chairman. 
 
¶7. (SBU) In mid-2007 Geoana,s PSD chairmanship was once 
again in jeopardy after a failed  PSD-sponsored drive to 
remove President Basescu from office, a drive engineered by 
Ion Iliescu and Viorel Hrebenciuc.  A second failure quickly 
followed, when a PSD no-confidence motion against the 
government of then PM Calin Tariceanu (National Liberal Party 
- PNL), failed largely because PSD,s Senate caucus leader 
Ion Iliescu did not want to alienate PNL.  Geoana,s 
chairmanship was further weakened following PSD,s 
comparatively poor results in the November 2007 accession 
elections to the European Parliament.  There were great 
doubts that Geoana could survive the upcoming 2008 elections. 
 
¶8. (SBU) By 2008, Geoana had become adept at the balancing 
act that had kept him in power, though perhaps not fully in 
the driver,s seat, as national chairman of Romania,s 
largest party.  In February 2008, Adrian Nastase ) with the 
support of Ion Iliescu - returned as chairman of the party,s 
National Council.  In 2008, Geoana ran for and won a Senate 
seat from a rural district, triggering criticism that he 
feared facing sophisticated urban voters.  In December 2008 
he took the PSD into a governing alliance with Basescu,s 
party, the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL), over the fierce 
opposition of Nastase and Iliescu but backed by most local 
party barons, who were eager to get back in government.  In 
May 2009 the party formally nominated Geoana as its 
presidential candidate.  Iliescu blessed Geoana,s candidacy 
at the formal filing ceremony.  By now, the number of those 
willing to bet on Geoana,s always imminent demise had 
considerably shrunk. 
 
GEOANA THE POLITICIAN 
 
¶9. (SBU) When Geoana took over the PSD chairmanship in 2005, 
he was politically ill-prepared to manage the ponderous, 
centralized party that Nastase had previously ruled with an 
iron fist.  As a politician, he lacked both the common touch 
and the popularity of Ion Iliescu and the firm authority of 
Adrian Nastase.  PSD leaders and the rank and file alike 
looked with jealous eyes upon their rival Traian Basescu and 
wished for a similarly charismatic leader.  While Basescu has 
served as an electoral engine for his party, Geoana 
personally has always polled below PSD,s popularity as a 
party.  In an organization used to hierarchical, top-down 
management, Geoana,s early, loose leadership style did not 
win respect or allies.   He found it difficult to implement 
his promised reforms, which few national party leaders really 
supported anyway.  In the face of the national leaders, not 
so subtle hostility, Geoana chose to rely on local party 
bosses to prop up his chairmanship and break Bucharest,s 
hold on the party.  Since he himself had little hands-on 
political experience as strategist or campaigner, Geoana 
gradually came to rely on old party hands like caucus leader 
Viorel Hrebenciuc and to admire the party,s top vote getters 
and campaigners, the local party bosses.  This reliance on 
local bosses led Geoana into the coalition with PDL in order 
to win patronage and funds for the local party chapters. 
Iliescu, Nastase and the older generation opposed the 
coalition but Geoana saw that the party was cash poor and 
could not afford to remain in opposition for long.  The once 
inexperienced Geoana weighed the risks of association with 
the President,s party against the financial benefits of 
joining the government and chose to side with his new allies, 
the local party officials.  This gamble would pay dividends 
in the first round of presidential elections on November 22, 
¶2009. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Geoana continually made compromises, which though 
not furthering his political goals did cement his position as 
party leader.  On Geoana,s watch, the party became more 
democratic.  Critics portrayed his attempts to allow for 
multiple voices within the party as an inability to control 
the organization.  However, these changes made allies out of 
the local leaders and eroded the power of the national party 
bosses.  Geoana has mediated between the many interest groups 
within the party and has made sure he is always on the 
winning side of internal debates.  While the local bosses 
have publicly expressed confidence that they could control a 
Geoana presidency, Geoana,s time as party chairman has shown 
that he may yet surprise them.  What they see as weakness has 
often been only a delaying tactic as he looks for new sources 
of strength. 
 
 
BUCHAREST 00000799  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
GEOANA THE (NON)IDEOLOGUE 
 
¶11. (SBU) Geoana has not yet transformed the PSD from 
post-communism to a true social democratic party, and so far 
there is no critical mass of party leaders behind such a 
move.  PSD,s original core constituency of old, poorly 
educated voters remains mostly the same, though smaller in 
number.  Despite Geoana,s own better draw in urban areas, 
the party as a whole has not connected with young urbanites. 
His campaign platform is a hodgepodge of grandiose promises 
including handouts and breaks for everyone, although he does 
at least acknowledge the financial crisis.  He would address 
major issues by creating formal panels to study them: a 
National Commission for Attracting EU Funds, a National Pact 
for Jobs, Training, and Social Protection, etc.  The word 
reform is barely even mentioned in his electoral platform. 
Nor has he displayed interest in supporting, much less 
initiating, unpopular reforms. His campaign has focused on 
his skills as a uniter, in contrast to Basescu the divider. 
 
¶12. (SBU) Critics reproach Geoana for his flip-flopping, 
populism, indecisiveness, and lack of substance.  He himself 
recently acknowledged that his late entry into politics had 
caused him to be awkward many times in the past.  In a party 
where diplomatic skills were thought of little use, Geoana 
never really thought to capitalize on his strengths but 
instead tried to adapt to what he thought others wanted, 
resulting in his current conflicted public persona.  Former 
associates criticize his jealous nature (trying to sideline 
most domestic political rivals), excessive ambition and 
ingratitude.  To some, he is an implausible hybrid of 
American mechanics (he is always scripted) and Romanian moral 
flexibility (bending his ideology to fit political 
expediency).  Both Iliescu and Basescu have more recently 
admitted that Geoana has made "good progress" as a 
politician, backhanded praise at best.  Iliescu had famously 
labeled him as a "fool," while Basescu would burst into 
laughter whenever asked whether he would nominate Geoana 
Prime Minister in 2008.  PSD renegade and independent 
presidential candidate Sorin Oprescu recently noted: "I 
looked into Mr. Geoana,s eyes and saw nothing there." 
GITENSTEIN