Romanians with a bent towards ultra-nationalism can rely on two major parties to represent their strong feelings for their fatherland.

When it comes to ultra-nationalism, the star in Romania is 58-year-old Corneliu Vadim Tudor. The Bucharest-born writer and journalist is the leader of the Greater Romania Party (GRP).

Although Tudor is represented in Europe's most democratic institution, the European Parliament, he has a reputation in Romania as a controversial and essentially populist political figure. In Wikipedia the first association that comes up after Tudor's name is "strongly nationalist and xenophobic views; theatrics which often accompany his rhetoric, and his reliance on the denunciations of political opponents".

Evidence for these claims emerges from the several civil court actions against him, which is the second thing he has in common with Bulgaria's Ataka leader Volen Siderov. Romania Mare has been sued for libel on several occasions in connection with Tudor's writings, which he usually produces under a pseudonym.

In 1971 Tudor received a degree in philosophy from the University of Bucharest. This was followed in 1975 by military training at the School for Reserve Officers in Bucharest. Unusually for the Cold War era, Tudor was granted a scholarship and studied history in Vienna in 1978-79. During the 1980s Tudor worked as a journalist and editor of several magazines.

Journalism, or a form of it, was at the start of Tudor's political career as well. In 1990 he set up the nationalist weekly Romania Mare (Greater Romania). The next year GRP was founded. At the time, Time magazine described the party's platform as "a crude mixture of anti-Semitism, racism and nostalgia for the good old days of communism".

"Anti" was a common theme in Tudor's speeches in those first years of democracy in Romania. His messages were directed against Hungarian and Roma minorities in the country as well as against homosexuals. As his foreign affairs priority, Tudor focused on neighbouring Moldova. In the past, the two countries had existed as two kingdoms united by one power, which was enough for Tudor to question Moldova's current independence. This behaviour earned Tudor the support of those Romanians disillusioned with the democratic changes, and in the 2000 presidential elections he scored his biggest election success so far. Tudor won 28 per cent of the vote and came second after Ion Iliescu.

The year 2004 was a turning point for Tudor. With the end of Romania's negotiations for European Union membership on the horizon, Tudor suddenly started supporting the EU and Nato. He even claimed to have changed his views on Jews, Judaism and the Holocaust. In a letter on February 1 2004, he renounced earlier statements he had made as inappropriately anti-Semitic; further, he wrote: "I know that I was wrong to have denied the Holocaust in Romania, which happened between 1941 and 1944 under Antonescu's regime."

In the 2004 parliamentary elections, the GRP did well, winning 13 per cent of the votes or 48 seats out of 332 seats in the lower house of deputies. In the senate, Tudor won 13.6 per cent or 21 seats out of 137. Although Tudor's result was not enough for a place in the government, and the prime ministerial post went to Calin Constantin Anton Popescu-Tariceanu, president of the National Liberal Party, the GRP won five places in the European Parliament. This is where GRP established common group with Siderov's Ataka. On January 9 2007, GRP and Ataka MEPs were among 20 MEPs who formed a new political group in EP under the name Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty. The French National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Benito Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini were among the founders. The group's founding charter has been described as "broadly anti-immigration, anti-EU constitution and anti-Turkish EU membership".

In December 2004, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel returned the Steaua Romaniei medal, one of the country's highest honours, after president Ion Iliescu awarded Tudor the same honour. Wiesel, a survivor of a Nazi death camp, said that he was returning the honour because he could not "accept being placed on the same level" as Tudor. Fifteen Radio Free Europe journalists, Timisoara mayor Gheorghe Ciuhandu, songwriter Alexandru Andries, and historian Randolph Braham also returned their Steaua Romaniei medals as a result of the honour conferred on Tudor. In its 2006 International Religious Freedom Report 2006, the US state department said that in November 2005, a university professor and Holocaust denier published an anti-Semitic article in Romania Mare, "a magazine controlled by the extreme nationalist Greater Romania Party". The article asserted that the country was the target of a Jewish invasion. The Federation of Jewish Communities reacted by filing a criminal complaint and by issuing a statement that urged relevant government institutions to take concrete measures to eradicate anti-Semitism and xenophobia. In January 2006, the police began investigating the professor for nationalist-chauvinistic propaganda.

The pretender

In the past 10 years, a rival for the ultra-nationalist vote in Romania has arisen in the person of Gigi Becali, leader of the New Generation Party (NGP) and owner of the most popular football club in the country, Steaua Bucharest. The NGP was established in 2000 as a centrist grouping around former Bucharest mayor Viorel Lis. In 2004, the NGP was taken over by Becali. Becali was born 49 years ago in the small town of Zagna. The family was deported to the town of Baragan by the communist authorities because of alleged links to the pre-World War 2 fascist Iron Guard movement. Becali got millions from real estate deals with the Romanian army after the democratic changes, according to reports in Romanian-language media.

The NGP defines itself as a Christian democratic party but is often described in the Romanian-language media as a nationalist party. In the most recent elections, in 2004, the party won 2.2 per cent of the votes but failed to win seats in the chamber of deputies and the senate. The same year Becali ranked sixth among 12 candidates for Romanian president with 1.77 per cent of the votes.

In the 2006 report cited above, the US said that during the national election campaign in 2004, "the extreme nationalist New Generation Party adopted for its electoral campaign a slogan used by the 1930s anti-Semitic Legionnaire Movement: I swear to God to make Romania into a country like the holy sun in the sky". Becali's public disputes with Tudor had become notorious in Romania for the numerous insults exchanged between them. Among Becali's public incidents was one in 2001 when Becali and his bodyguards insulted and physically abused Malonga Parfait, presenter of a satirical football TV Show, Football la Maxx. Becali allegedly called Parfait a "monkey" because the latter is of African origin. In Romanian-language newspaper Ziarul, Romanian journalist Mihai Niculescu published a story about Becali's attempts to stop a gay parade in Bucharest.

In May 2006, Becali's personal foundation, the George Becali Christian Foundation, along with the Romanian Orthodox Church and 22 NGOs, signed a protest letter calling on the government and the courts to ban the Bucharest GayFest 2006 parade, Niculesco reported. A few days later, the Bucharest court of appeals ruled that the parade was legal, and it was given significant police protection. Becali justified his opposition to the pride parade by stating that he did not want to "discriminate against homosexuals" but that, "they can do what they want in their homes, but not on the streets. I call on the Romanian Orthodox Church to defend the Christian faith and morals". Also in 2006, Romanian news website 9am.ro quoted Becali as saying "we'll give a few million dollars (for a referendum) and we'll finish off the homosexuals in the country".

In October 2006 Becali was awarded the LGBT community's "black ball" for the most homophobic personality in Romania, as part of the 2006 Gay Awards Gala which took place during the Gay Film Nights Festival of Cluj-Napoca in Romania.

In the same year, Romanian-language Cotidianul published a headline saying "Becali promises cultural revolution".