role in Romanian politics. In fact, Romanians have a name – mineriada (mineriad) – for the periodic eruptions of violence when Jiu Valley miners went on strike and descended upon Bucharest. The first post-revolution action came in 1990. In May 1990, former communist official Ion Iliescu won the presidential election with a majority of over 80% (President from 1990–1996, re-elected December 2000). Some groups, dissatisfied with results, continued street demonstrations in Bucharest, after most of the participants in the electoral meetings before the election had renounced the sit in. Several weeks after the elections, when the authorities attempted to evict the remaining protesters occupying one of Bucharest's central square, violence erupted and, as the police and gendarmerie retreated under pressure, protesters attacked several state institutions, including the police headquarters, the national television station, and the Foreign Ministry. When the police failed to contain the crowds in University Square, President Iliescu issued a call to arms to Romania's population to prevent further attacks on the newly elected authorities. Among those who responded to the call from organizers were coal miners from the Jiu Valley, who accepted the government offered transport to go to Bucharest to confront the demonstrators. An estimated 10,000 miners were transported to the capital in special trains. State television broadcast videos of workers attacking and fighting with protesters, including students, as well as the opposition party headquarters. The miners claim that the agitation and most of the brutality was the work of Iliescu's government agents who had infiltrated and disguised themselves as miners (see the June 1990 Mineriad), and there were widespread rumors and suspicion that the Serviciul Român de Informații (the successor to the Securitate) was involved or behind the events with the miners. Later parliamentary inquiries showed that members of the government intelligence services were involved in the instigation and manipulation of both the protesters and the miners, and that the miners had been "joined by vigilantes who were later credibly identified as former officers of the Securitate." For two days, the miners (aided and abetted by the former Securitate members) violently confronted the protesters and other targets. Despite denials by the secret service, in February 1994 a Bucharest court "found two security officers, Colonel Ion. Nicolae and warrant officer Corneliu Dumitrescu, guilty of ransacking the house of Ion Rațiu, a leading figure in the National Peasant Christian Democratic Party, during the miners’ incursion, and stealing