1989. Nevertheless, many present-day Romanian politicians are former members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and have also had ties with the Romanian secret police (i.e. Securitatea). Since membership in the party was a requirement for advancement before 1989, many people joined to get ahead rather than because of ideological conviction; however, the communist past of some Romanian politicians remains highly controversial to the current day. 1990–1992 The Romanian Communist Party (PCR) officially ceased to exist after the December 1989 Romanian Revolution. An ad interim/acting government swiftly took office starting in late December 1989 which consisted of National Salvation Front (FSN) members and would eventually govern Romania well up until 1992. The FSN had initially not decided to run in the 1990 elections but subsequently retracted their initial position and opted to participate in the 1990 Romanian general election, having the full support of state-owned media and an overwhelming majority of the voters during the electoral campaign, thereby eventually securing a landslide win. Prior to the 1990 Romanian general election, over 200 new political parties sprang up just after 1989, most of them gravitating towards their leaders rather than revolving around political programs or full-fledged geopolitical agendas. Nevertheless, all major political parties espoused democracy and free market reforms to varying degrees or extents. The largest political party by far, the governing National Salvation Front (FSN), proposed slow, cautious economic reforms, and an artificial, weak social safety net (mostly for the working class of the still operating factories of the heavy industries). In stark contrast, the main opposition parties, more specifically the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNŢCD), favored rapid, sweeping economic reforms, immediate privatization (which would have caused a shock therapy) as well as a drastic reduction and even total exclusion of former Communist Party (PCR) members from public Romanian political life. Apart from PCR members, the early demands of the Romanian historical democratic parties were also the reduction of the undercover members of the former Securitate (which could have been PCR members as well) from all areas of public life (thereby endorsing the Proclamation of Timișoara and the lustration law against the former Romanian secret police). In the 1990 presidential and legislative elections, the FSN and its presidential candidate, Ion Iliescu, won with a large majority of the votes (67.02 and 85.07 percent, respectively). The strongest opposition parties in the Senate were the