Overzealous Sunshine

Andrei Vishinsky, Soviet Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs, had said privately and cynically (TIME, May 27) that in a completely free election the Communist-sponsored Government of Rumania would get 40% of the vote but that "with just the littlest bit of pressure" it would get 90%. In last week's election the Government parties got 84% of the popular vote, 348 of the 414 seats in the new Parliament.* But the pressure was anything but "littlest."

Sunshine. Cabled TIME Correspondent Simon Bourgin: "The elections were the most corrupt and boldly manipulated in the postwar Balkans. The Government had denied the opposition radio time, newsprint for its papers, transportation for its candidates. The Democratic Front's risingsun symbol was plastered every where, including polling places. In one brewery, workers were treated to a one-act play entitled Vote the Sun, then marched in to vote.

"A big portion of the electorate was disfranchised, because voters had to present as many as 16 documents to get cards entitling them to ballots. On election day 11,000 cardless citizens braved Communist thug lines surrounding the U.S. Military Mission headquarters to sign charges that they had been denied the right to vote. Yet some voters displayed fistfuls of cards. One Communist showed me 47--two for himself, three for his wife, 42 for distribution to trusted friends.

"Communists were staggered when returns from rural districts showed votes piling up for opposition candidates. At the last minute local Front bosses had to reshuffle the rural count and ring up huge city majorities to make possible the Government landslide. Bucharest, Rumania's Jersey City, turned in over 425,000 for the Government partymen, 70,000 for the opposition.

"The square in front of one opposition party's headquarters was patrolled by pickets whose function Premier Petru Groza described as 'protection of the opposition,' but whom one Government spokesman called 'overzealous workers.' I saw 20 overzealous workers beat an oppositionist within an inch of his life."

Moonshine. Accounts of most foreign newsmen in Bucharest agreed with Bourgin's testimony. But not all. The Government hustled New York Daily Worker Correspondent John Pittman to a radio microphone to give his view. Gushed Pittman: "Millions of American Negroes and peasants would be glad to get a chance to go to the polls and have police and soldiers protect them." At a post-election press conference, U.S. and British newsmen questioned Premier Groza mercilessly about the excesses they had witnessed. When a Pravda correspondent finally got a chance, he asked the Premier a question that was a perfect illustration of the abyss in thinking between East and West. The question: "To what do you attribute this extraordinary defeat of reactionary forces?"

* Among those elected: famed Violinist-Composer Georges Enesco (First and Second Rumanian Rhapsodies), who received news of his election while preparing for a New York concert.

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