Consequently, FDUS candidates won all 369 seats in the Great National Assembly, also ensuring the rubber-stamp confirmation of Nicolae Ceaușescu as President of Romania.

Popular discontent was contrasted by a massive PCR recruitment drive, as well as by the official approval of gender equality, which saw 30% of Assembly seats going to women.

The communists' full hold on power was contested by an underground National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), with Ion Puiu trying and failing to present himself as an opposition candidate.

The presidential couple was tried and executed during the events, while some members of the parliament and cabinet were singled out for their crimes and all spent time in prison, where Giosan died.

Historian Zoe Petre links them to national communism and to "Ceaușescu's personal phantasms", wherein "quantitative quotas of 'female comrades' were imposed on all party and state organs."

This change of course was ordered by Ceaușescu, reportedly because Verdeț had sought to prevent the rationing of bread, or more generally because he would not immediately enforce the president's various commands.

[13] Meanwhile, his civilian ministries were being kept in check by Romania's intelligence agency, the Securitate, which, in 1984, demoted a head of the Religious Affairs Department, Ion Roșianu, who was allegedly trafficking in influence.

Engineer Ion Puiu "issued a comprehensive political platform" for the PNȚ, calling on the PCR to respect constitutional guarantees and renounce its position as the vanguard party.

In April 1985, Securitate informant Iosif Constantin Drăgan reported that Corneliu Coposu viewed the election as "masterminded and falsified", noting that FDUS candidates in Sălaj County had received only positive votes.

[17] Werner Somerauer, a Saxon photographer and pipefitter, also protested the election in Brașov County by stealing ballots which he preserved as "historical documents".

[24][25] According to novelist and fellow deputy Dumitru Popescu-Dumnezeu, Giosan owed his political career to Ceaușescu, who "landed him at the Great National Assembly rostrum".

[24] Dăscălescu moved his constituency between two neighborhoods of Brașov, while his rival Verdeț, who only returned to a ministerial position in October 1985, lost his seat at Cluj-Napoca and became instead deputy for Bacău County.

[28] Other examples include Deputy Premiers Ștefan Andrei (moving from Horezu to Videle), Alexandrina Găinușe (from Comănești to Oltenița), Ioan Totu (from Dragalina to Dumbrăveni), Ioan Avram (from Bucharest to Ploiești), Ioan C. Petre (from Măcin to Olt County), and Ion Dincă (from Balș to Medgidia); ministers Neculai Agachi, Emil Bobu, George Homoștean, Ion Pățan, Petre Preoteasa, Eugen Proca, Vasile Pungan, Ion Teoreanu, and Richard Gheorghe Winter began terms in Târgoviște, Craiova, Bicaz, Fălticeni, Cluj-Napoca, Lugoj, Tractorul-Brașov, Târnăveni and Negrești, respectively.

[34] Popescu-Dumnezeu and fellow novelist Ion Brad similarly changed seats—the former moved from Iași to Reghin, while the latter left Vatra Dornei for Răcari; another author, Dumitru Radu Popescu, became a Constanța deputy after having previously served in Lechința.

This was the case for deputy Premiers Dimitrie Ancuța (at Deva) and Nicolae M. Ion (at Curtea de Argeș), for Timber Industry Minister Gheorghe Constantinescu (at Siret), as well as for Dumitru Alecu, elected at Novaci, who became Assembly secretary.

Propaganda also referred to his reelection as a "sure guarantee for pursuing the magnificent program of creating a multilaterally developed socialist society and of advancing Romania toward communism.

[17] Mircea Kivu believes government recognised that there had been a relative drop in support for the FDUS, from 98.5% in 1980, to 97.7% in 1985, which allegedly prompted it to modify the 1974 electoral law, and submit new rules for the Assembly election of 1990.

[43] The regime continued to lose endorsements from regular Romanians, as it persisted with cutbacks, with Ceaușescu insisting on spending all available state funds on repaying the foreign debt.

[44] Over those months, local intellectuals became enthusiastic about the: as reported by a Securitate informant in 1985, Romanian writers hoped that Gorbachev would bring his liberalisation to Romania to reintroduce "modesty in public life" and eliminate censorship.

[45] Later in 1985, a Romanian Democratic Action was founded by 13 pseudonymous activists, who began monitoring the regime's record on ecology while also expressing full support for Perestroika.

[46] At that stage, the authorities clamped down on dissent by ordering the arrest and killing of engineer Gheorghe Ursu, who was keeping a diary critical of Ceaușescu.

[48] Puiu was rearrested in May 1987, after attempting to send Gorbachev a memorandum, but the Securitate was unable to prevent other protest documents from being circulated at home and abroad.

[49] The Brașov rebellion, which erupted that November, was probably caused by Dăscălescu's decision to punish workers at Steagul Roșu for design flaws attributable to poor management.

[50] During the final days of that year, the Securitate detained Gabriel Andreescu, who championed human rights in opposition to the regime, and held him until January 1988.

One anonymous voter suggested that Ceaușescu's approval of power cuts showed that he was mentally ill, and therefore ineligible, while another warned of a coming revolt.

[54] On 20 December, Dăscălescu joined him there and attempted to negotiate the regime's political survival by meeting with a revolutionary delegation; when his outreach effort failed, he supported renewed violence.

"[58] On 27 December the FSN leader, Ion Iliescu, supported the notion of leaving future elections to be managed by the Front, in order to promote "the ideas of unity and their continued realization.

[60] This trend was questioned by the opposition and overturned by electoral laws which established more equality between the competing groups, with the FSN emerging as a political party.

[69] In November 1990, Verdeț founded a far-left group called Socialist Party of Labour (PSM), which was joined by poet Adrian Păunescu.