After the revolution of December 22, 1989, Romania had three heads of state. Ion Iliescu had held office as President two times, Emil Constantinescu one time and Traian Basescu one time for the time being, Info-Prim Neo reports. Immediately after the fall of communism and of Nicolae Ceausescu, the administration of the country was taken over by the Council of the National Salvation Front (CFSN) formed of political dissidents, including Ion Iliescu, who was then 59. The CFSN was the organizer of the first free elections. Afterward, it disbanded itself. Ion Iliescu became temporary President of Romania. On May 20, 1990, Iliescu was elected head of state. In the November 17, 1996 elections, he gave the seat to Emil Constantinescu, but returned to the post after the December 2000 elections. According to Romanian press reports, Iliescu was a dominant and controversial political figure in Romania after 1989. His father was an illegalist Communist. In December 1931, he went clandestinely to the USSR and participated in the Fifth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) in Gorikovo. He had stayed in the USSR for four years. When he returned, he was sentenced to imprisonment and then died in prison. Iliescu studied at the Moscow Energy Institute. In 1949, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth. Afterward, he was named division head at the Central Committee of the PCR, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth and minister for youth matters, secretary of the Committee of the PCR in Timis and Iasi, and head of the National Water Council. From 1965 until 1984, he had been a member of the Central Committee of the PCR. After failing into disgrace, Iliescu became deputy secretary of the County Committee of the PCR in Timis, then in Iasi. Until 1989, he had been director of the Technical Publishing House and then became a founding member of the National Salvation Front, which turned into the Democratic National Salvation Front and then into the Social Democracy Party of Romania and the Social Democratic Party (PSD). Now he is the president of honor of the PSD. The second president Emil Constantinescu was born in 1939 in Tighina town in Bessarabia. He was elected President of Romania in 1996. He graduated from the Law Faculty of the Bucharest University. He started work in 1960 as a judge on probation at a regional tribunal. The political situation made him abandon that job and re-become student of the Geology and Geography Faculty. He is a Doctor of Geology of the Bucharest University and Doctor ès Sciences of the Duke University in the U.S. From 1991 until present, he has worked as a professor of mineralogy at the Bucharest University. He is a Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universities in Liège, Athens, Montréal, New Delhi, Beijing, Bilkent – Ankara, Sofia, Maribor, Chisinau, Bangkok, Astana and of the Paris-based Ecole Normale Supérieure. Emil Constantinescu has written 12 books and made over 60 studies in geology. He is a member of honor and elected member of the Societies of Geology and Mineralogy of the UK, German, the U.S., Greece and Japan, of the French Geographic Society and of the National Geographic Society in the U.S. Constantinescu was awarded the Prize of the Romanian Academy for scientific contribution in geology, Palmas Academicas by the Language Academy in Rio de Janeiro, gold and honorific medals by the Comenius University in Bratislava, Caroline University in Prague and the University in Sao Paolo, the Arthur Bertrand medal by the Academy of Sciences, Institut de France, medals by the National Institute of Science and Arts of France, the Paris–Sorbonne University and the University in Amsterdam. While he had been President, Romania implemented a lot of reforms in economy, justice and administration. Constantinescu managed to unite the political forces and the civil society in periods of governmental, parliamentary and social crises and in solving major problems concerning the juridical regime of property and Romania's attitude to the Kosovo conflict. Traian Basescu became the third President of Romania on December 21, 2004, when he was 53. He ran in election on behalf of the D.A. Alliance (PNL-PD). Traian Basescu graduated from the Marine Institute “Mircea cel Batran” in Constanta, the Navigation Faculty, in 1976. In 1995, he graduated from advanced courses in maritime transport industry at the Norwegian Academy. In 1989, he became director general of the Inspectorate for Civil Navigation of the Ministry of Transport. He had held this post until the Revolution of December 22, 1989. He was a member of the Romanian Communist Party. After the collapse of Communism, he said he joined the PCR only because he wanted to make a career in merchant marine. On January 18, 2007, PSD initiated a procedure to suspend President Basescu for violating the Constitution. At a sitting on April 19, 2007, the Parliament voted in favor of suspending Basescu with 322 votes for, 108 against and 10 abstentions. He was suspended on April 20, 2007, after the Constitutional Court examined the Parliament's decision. After the May 19, 2007 referendum, Basescu was reconfirmed as head of state with 74.48% of the votes in favor. During the suspension, Nicolae Vacaroiu acted as Caretaker President of Romania. Twelve candidates ran in the November 22, 2009 presidential elections. According to the exit poll, the PD-L candidate Traian Basescu and the PSD candidate Mircea Geoana will compete in the run-off on December 6.