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Rumania now enters a perilous new phase of its revolution. The tyrant has been overthrown, but a power vacuum has been left behind. The National Salvation Front is ruling by televised announcements; no authority is in full control anywhere. Weeks are likely to pass before anything resembling an effective government emerges.
In the meantime, the only national institution with authority and legitimacy is the army. While the military has promised the Front its support, the ad hoc alliance faces the task of ending civil strife and imposing law-and-order on a country flooded with weapons and a thirst for retribution. Says a Western military attache: "Proper law-and-order can be restored only when the army takes all excess weapons out of circulation. But it can do that only when it has won the confidence of the population."
Thus the near future contains more questions than answers. Will the National Salvation Front win popular loyalty in spite of its domination by communists? Will the army lose patience with squabbling civilians and simply take over? Can peace be restored so that Rumanians can cooperate in constructing a freer political system? Does democracy stand a chance?
The U.S., the Soviet Union and the European Community have all pledged to help Rumania mend its wounds and have dispatched shipments of food and medicines. But even with the best of will, there is little outsiders can do beyond providing emergency aid until the transition government, or the one to follow it, manages to grasp firm control. In an attempt to achieve that and broaden its base, the Front at week's end expanded from 60 to 145 members. Among the newcomers were representatives of some ten nascent political parties and local action committees and citizen militias from around the country. Once a solid coalition is in place, its biggest task will be to organize and carry out Rumania's first free elections since 1928.
In a country with no tradition of pluralism and democracy, the creation of parties, of programs, of an electoral system is a daunting enough assignment -- even without post-revolutionary confusion and chaos. There have been suggestions that the balloting should be postponed beyond April. But Rumanians, who have shed much blood to win the right to choose a representative government, are not likely to allow anyone to keep them from doing so.