1932 Romanian general election
General elections were held in Romania in July 1932. The Chamber of Deputies was elected on 17 July, whilst the Senate was elected in three stages on 20, 24 and 26 July. The result was a victory for the governing National Peasants' Party-German Party alliance, which won 274 of the 387 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 104 of the 113 seats in the Senate elected through universal male vote. Of the 274 Chamber seats, 265 were taken by the National Peasant's Party and nine by the German Party.
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 183 2000 0518 507, Julius Maniu
Image: Ion Gheorghe Duca Foto 02
Image: Gh. I. Bratianu
The National Peasants' Party was an agrarian political party in the Kingdom of Romania. It was formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party (PNR), a conservative-regionalist group centred on Transylvania, and the Peasants' Party (PȚ), which had coalesced the left-leaning agrarian movement in the Old Kingdom and Bessarabia. The definitive PNR–PȚ merger came after a decade-long rapprochement, producing a credible contender to the dominant National Liberal Party (PNL). National Peasantists agreed on the concept of a "peasant state", which defended smallholding against state capitalism or state socialism, proposing voluntary cooperative farming as the basis for economic policy. Peasants were seen as the first defence of Romanian nationalism and of the country's monarchic regime, sometimes within a system of social corporatism. Regionally, the party expressed sympathy for Balkan federalism and rallied with the International Agrarian Bureau; internally, it championed administrative decentralization and respect for minority rights, as well as, briefly, republicanism. It remained factionalized on mainly ideological grounds, leading to a series of defections.
Poster of the National Christian Party, used for the general election of 1937. Image shows a stereotypical Jewish man maneuvering democratic politics, depicted as a Star of David festooned with heads of PNȚ leftists Mihalache, Virgil Madgearu, and Nicolae L. Lupu, alongside Grigore Iunian of the Radical Peasants' Party
Former PNȚ politicians, in uniform, attending the founding session of the National Renaissance Front; from the left: Armand Călinescu, Grigore Gafencu, Mihai Ralea. To their right is Mitiță Constantinescu, formerly of the PNL
Protest letter sent to Ion Antonescu by Maniu and Dinu Brătianu, January 1942
Maniu interrogated at his show trial in November 1947