Exit Polls Favor Romania’s Iliescu : Election: Victory by hard-line president could stifle reform in troubled East European nation.

BUCHAREST, Romania — Still in the starting blocks of Eastern Europe’s race to overcome communism, Romanians voted Sunday in an election that appeared destined to return hard-line President Ion Iliescu to power and set the stage for a new era of confrontation.

If the forecasts based on exit polling prove accurate when the vote is counted later this week, the outcome could provide a worst-case scenario for Romania, where sharp divisions between Iliescu’s rural supporters and urban advocates of reform have previously erupted in violence.

Iliescu and his Democratic National Salvation Front have rejected a swift transition to a market economy, clinging to the centralized power and state ownership that have scared away most Western investors and sabotaged Romania’s recovery.

Romanians in the cities, however, have been pressing for a change in leadership to rid their country of its backward image and restore historic links with Western Europe that were destroyed during four decades of Communist dictatorship.

A new four-year term for Iliescu and a hopelessly divided Parliament--the expected results of Sunday’s elections--would elevate the social turmoil to the highest levels of power and likely stall any progress toward reform or even refinement of the neo-Communist status quo.

Exit polls conducted with the help of Germany’s INFAS research firm, which has delivered highly accurate projections elsewhere in Eastern Europe, gave Iliescu 48% of the presidential vote, with pro-reform challenger Emil Constantinescu trailing with 33%. Ultranationalist Gheorghe Funar was said to be collecting another 10% of the vote.

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A runoff for the presidency will be held Oct. 11, but Iliescu’s stronger-than-expected showing coupled with support he can count on from Funar’s following seemed to ensure his reelection on the second ballot.

Constantinescu, dean of Bucharest University and the articulate reform champion the opposition had pinned its hopes on, was visibly devastated by the projection that he would lose.

“Technically, it was very well done,” the tall, bearded challenger said of the exit poll, when asked if he considered it accurate. “But election results in Romania depend on the degree to which the public has been informed and the degree of fear still present, and there are still a lot of problems there.”

He said that he was even more surprised and disappointed by the second-place finish of the Democratic Convention, the opposition alliance he represents, in balloting for Parliament.

“I had hoped for another level of civic education,” Constantinescu said as he ducked out of an election-night party to caucus with advisers on the disappointing forecast of the results.

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According to the projections based on interviews with more than 15,000 voters, Iliescu’s hard-line Democratic National Salvation Front won 27.5% of the vote, with the Democratic Convention running at 23%, a reformist faction of the National Salvation Front getting 11%, Funar’s staunchly nationalist Romanian Unity Party at 7.5%, the Hungarian Nationalist Party with 7% and the reactionary Greater Romania Party projected at 5%. Four other parties were also thought to have cleared the 3% minimum needed to gain seats in Parliament.

The election was reported by international observers to be surprisingly lacking in the fraud and intimidation that marred Romania’s May, 1990, vote--the first multi-party contest after a December, 1989, revolution that overthrew Communist tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu.

“We’ve had a couple of logistic problems . . . but we’ve not had a single report of violence this time,” said Edwin Rekosh, a lawyer with the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington.

Some opposition supporters fear renewed unrest in Romanian cities if Iliescu’s anti-reform party and other conservatives band together to form a parliamentary majority and the right to seat the new government for this Balkan nation of 23 million.

Iliescu and the National Salvation Front won sizable majorities during the election more than two years ago, but the president’s resort to brutality to put down anti-government protests served to polarize the troubled country and give it a dangerous and unstable image abroad.

As is the case in much of Eastern Europe, opposition support tends to be strongest in the cities, while the peasantry clings to the remnants of the Communist system that is the only power most have ever known.

Opposition supporters in Bucharest were shattered by Iliescu’s landslide victory more than two years ago and took to the streets of the capital to denounce him as a neo-Communist and accuse the Front of rigging the elections.

After weeks of disruptive protests that blocked the main traffic artery in Bucharest, Iliescu summoned to the capital thousands of unruly miners who beat up demonstrators, sacked opposition party offices and terrorized the population for three days. Six people died, and hundreds were injured.

Iliescu triggered another rampage by the miners a year ago in order to unseat reformist Prime Minister Petre Roman, a fellow leader of the Front whose efforts at transforming Romania into a market economy sent prices and public anger soaring.

Iliescu’s attempt to distance himself from Roman’s unpopular moves toward reform has been largely successful. Even many of those who remain unemployed do not attribute their misery to the president.

Results from the presidential vote are expected Thursday, and the final parliamentary tally has been promised only next week.