It wouldn't take much for the Romanian government to impress the nation's peasant farmers. A little seed and some compensation for crop failures would be a stunning gift.
Few expect it. But President Ion Iliescu is still expected to sweep back to power in Sunday's presidential and parliamentary voting.Angel Paraschiv is a farmer in this village 40 miles from the capital of Bucharest. At 35, he doesn't have a bathroom and lives with 21 relatives in a roofless house with four rooms.
His wealth is a tractor, a horse, two cows, dozens of ducks and a run-down Lada car he uses to travel to Bucharest to sell his vegetables.
His fortune depends on the capricious weather and his ability to pry credit from the banks to buy enough seed for crops.
The Paraschivs lost thousands of dollars earlier this year in a failed carrot crop. That meant no money to complete the house or repair the Lada.
The government of the ruling Social Democracy Party promised to compensate farmers for crops damaged by bad weather and blight.
The money never came, said Paraschiv, a wiry man with bright blue eyes. Maybe the government sent some, "but it went astray."
In previous post-Communist elections in 1990 and 1992, peasants like Paraschiv - 45 percent of Romania's 17.25 million voters - have supported President Ion Iliescu and the Social Democracy Party.
Supporting the most powerful leader is a strong tradition in the rural Balkans, and Paraschiv will vote for Iliescu again this time - "He is a big diplomat," the peasant said.
Iliescu recently has been received in Washington and other Western capitals that were once leery of the ex-Communist.
Neither Iliescu, his 15 rivals for the presidency, nor the 12 parties vying for parliament are likely to ease peasant woes.
Two pounds of tomato or carrot seed cost $90, wheat is expensive and weather is unpredictable. Banks charge double-digit interest for a loan to buy a tractor.
The 22 Paraschivs live in four hot, smelly rooms. Their produce brings in from $151 to $242 each month.
An ethnic Serb whose family didn't acquire land when it arrived here after World War I, Paraschiv still doesn't even own the soil where he grows potatoes, turnips and peppers.
When authorities returned 2.5 acres of land to each peasant family after the 1989 revolution toppled communism, Paraschiv's family had no land to reclaim.
Life also is hard for landowning peasants. At the southern end of this small town of 10,000 people, Ioana Ilie scrabbles in black mud to find small fish that she and her family can eat. Every one she finds is dead.
She works for village Serbs - when they need her - for the equivalent of a few dollars a day. Otherwise, it is a painful struggle to feed and clothe three teenage children and her unemployed husband.
"I'm going to vote for (opposition candidate Emil) Con-stan-tin-escu," Ilie said. "He has children. He knows what poverty means."
State television, which the opposition contends is biased in favor of Iliescu, is the only form of media to reach rural Romania.
"We will vote for Iliescu because that is what we have to do every four years," said Toader Nicola, a 48-year-old peasant from a mountainous village near the Transylvanian city of Sibiu.
Until dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed in 1989, peasants were restricted to their villages. Now they can travel freely to sell their produce for whatever price they can get.
"We peasants are not interested in politics. We need land," Paraschiv said. "We are the sole of the country," he said pointing to the rubber underside of his boots.