The Communist Party was initially outlawed by Ion Iliescu, but he soon revoked that decision ; as a consequence, Communism is not outlawed in Romania today.

Since then there have been three democratic changes of government: in 1996, the democratic-liberal opposition and its leader Emil Constantinescu acceded to power ; in 2000 the Social Democrats returned to power, with Iliescu once again president ; and in 2004 Traian Băsescu was elected president, with an electoral coalition called Justice and Truth Alliance ( DA ).

** After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu, who flees his palace in a helicopter to escape inevitable execution after the palace was invaded by rioters.

From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party ( PSD ), whose honorary president he remains.

Iliescu's father, Alexandru Iliescu, was a railroad worker with Communist views during the period in which the Romanian Communist Party was banned by the authorities.

During his stay in Moscow, he was the secretary of the " Association of Romanian Students " it is alleged that he knew Mikhail Gorbachev, although Iliescu always denied this.

President Nicolae Ceaușescu, however, probably believed a connection between the two existed, since during Gorbachev's visit to Romania in July 1989, Iliescu was sent outside of Bucharest to prevent any contact.

Iliescu was quickly acknowledged as the leader of the organization and therefore of the provisional authority.

In the PSD elections of 21 April 2005, Iliescu lost the Party presidency to Mircea Geoană, but was elected as honorary president of the party in 2006, a position without official executive authority in the party.

Some alleged he had connections to the KGB, the allegations continued during 2003-2008, when Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who had been granted access to Soviet archives, declared that Iliescu and some of the NSF members were KGB agents, that Iliescu had been in close connection with Mikhail Gorbachev ever since they had allegedly met during Iliescu's stay in Moscow, and that the Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a plot organized by the KGB to regain control of the country's policies ( gradually lost under Ceaușescu's rule ).

The only hard evidence published was a discussion between Gorbachev and Bulgaria's Aleksandar Lilov from May 23, 1990 ( after Iliescu's victory in the May 20 elections ) in which Gorbachev says that Iliescu holds a " calculated position ", and that despite sharing common views with Iliescu, Gorbachev wanted to avoid sharing this impression with the public.

Iliescu had to revoke Tănase's pardon a few days later due to the media outcry, claiming that " a legal adviser was superficial in analyzing the case ".

For several months after the events of December 1989, it was widely argued that Ion Iliescu and the National Salvation Front ( FSN ) had merely taken advantage of the chaos to stage a coup.

After winning a November 17 runoff against Ion Iliescu, Constantinescu was sworn in as president on November 29 and appointed Victor Ciorbea, the mayor of Bucharest, as Prime Minister of Romania.

After the victory of the PDSR in the 2000 legislative elections and the re-election of Ion Iliescu as President of Romania, Năstase was elected president of the PDSR, which soon changed its name to the Social Democratic Party ( PSD ) after merging with another party.

Năstase was confirmed by the Parliament as Prime Minister on December 28, 2000, following his appointment to the position in days before by President Ion Iliescu.

His victory represented a surprise defeat for former President Ion Iliescu, who was expected to defeat Geoană handily.

Geoană's win was attributed by the media to last minute backroom dealing by party leaders opposed to Iliescu as well as to public gaffes made by Iliescu at the Party Congress, including using allegedly old communist terms when referring to his party colleagues.

Whilst incumbent President Ion Iliescu of the Social Democracy Party of Romania received the most votes in the first round, he was defeated by Emil Constantinescu of the Romanian Democratic Convention in the second round.

In 1996, Emil Constantinescu, the then rector of the University of Bucharest, was elected President of Romania, after defeating Ion Iliescu in national presidential elections.

In December 2004, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel returned the Steaua României medal, one of the country's highest honors, after President Ion Iliescu awarded Tudor the same honor in the last days of his presidency.

The PDSR party governed Romania from 1990 until 1996 through several coalitions and governments with Ion Iliescu as head of state.

Ion Iliescu in 1976 together with Elena Ceaușescu

Under the pressure of the events that led to the Mineriads, his political stance has veered with time: from a proponent of the Perestroika, Iliescu adopted a social democratic position, aligning himself with the Western European political spectrum.

Iliescu issued a call to the Romanian people to come and defend the government, prompting several group of miners to descend on the capital, armed with wooden clubs and bats.

Most controversial of all, on 15 December 2004, a few days before the end of his last term, Iliescu pardoned 47 convicts, including Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners during the early 1990s, who had been sentenced in 1999 to 18 years in prison in conjunction with the 1991 Mineriad.

Iliescu won with almost 90 % of the popular vote and thus became the first elected President of Romania.

Initially, Iliescu did not agree with having the couple executed, but general Victor Stănculescu offered the support of the army only in exchange for having the couple executed.

After few hours of debating this option, Iliescu agreed with Stănculescu.

In May 1990, partly due to the National Salvation Front's use of the media and of the partly preserved Communist Party infrastructure to silence the democratic opposition, Iliescu became Romania's first elected president after the revolution, with a majority of 85 %.

Over the course of a month-long demonstration in University Square, many protesters had gathered with the goal of attaining official recognition for the 8th demand of the popular Proclamation of Timişoara, which stated that communists and former communists ( including President Iliescu himself ) should be prevented from holding official functions.

Before leaving, the miners went to the Chamber of Deputies asking for Iliescu's resignation, but after Iliescu met with Cozma the miners left Bucharest.

After undergoing IVF using donated eggs, Iliescu initially became pregnant with triplets, but one of the fetuses died in utero.

President Ion Iliescu refused to negotiate with the protesters and called them " golani " ( meaning a hooligan, a scamp, a ruffian or a good-for-nothing — which later gave the protest its name ) or legionnaires.

Iliescu later served as Minister for Youth-related Issues between 1967 and 1971.

In December 2001, Iliescu pardoned three inmates convicted for bribery, including George Tănase, former Financial Guard head commissioner for Ialomița.

After the situation calmed down, president Iliescu publicly thanked the miners for their help in restoring the order in Bucharest, and requested their return to the Jiu Valley.

The same day Năstase presented his proposal for replacements to president Ion Iliescu, leading to media speculation that the three were fired instead.

On 7 April 1992, the struggle for power inside the National Salvation Front (, FSN ) between the more hard-line group led by Ion Iliescu and the more reformist group led by Petre Roman resulted in the Iliescu group withdrawing from FSN and the founding of the Democratic National Salvation Front (, FDSN ), which would later become the present-day PSD.

In 2000 he re-entered politics as a member of the National Liberal Party ( PNL ); he ran for the presidency of Romania in the November 2000 elections, but came in third, behind Ion Iliescu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor.

The person signing the decree for organizing the court ( Ion Iliescu ) lacked any credentials for doing it, except that of being one of the leaders of the coup.

His victory represented a surprise defeat for the former President and founder of the PSD Ion Iliescu, who was expected to defeat Geoană handily.

Iliescu remained the central figure in Romanian politics for more than a decade, being re-elected for the third time in 2000, after a term out of power between 1996 – 2000.

They also supported faster reforms, a true market economy and a western-type democracy ( Ion Iliescu argued for socialism " Swedish-style " and an " original democracy ", considering multi-party system as being antiquated.

After the fall of Ceauşescu in December 1989, Verdeţ declared himself the head of a provisional government, but it only lasted for about 20 minutes, after which he was pushed aside by Ion Iliescu, who emerged as the leader of the National Salvation Front.

In November 1996, many miners, fed up with what they saw as a betrayal on the part of Iliescu, voted for his opponent, Emil Constantinescu, during the parliamentary and presidential elections.