Documents purported to be transcripts of top-level ruling party meetings with ministers discussing intimidating opposition leaders and rigging votes in the Senate have surfaced ahead of Romania's Sunday elections.

  Prime Minister Adrian Nastase has called the transcripts fakes, but they have become an unexpected campaign issue ahead of the fiercely contested elections.

It was not immediately clear whether the hundreds of pages of documents were legitimate. Two senior party members, and the former secretary general of the party said sections of the purported transcripts were accurate.

The documents, which allegedly record party meetings from the past 18 months, first appeared in Romanian newspapers on Tuesday. They depict senior Social Democratic Party members allegedly talking about instructing prosecutors to investigate opposition leaders.

The officials also allegedly propose tightening control over television and print outlets, and suspicious about civic groups which promote views that oppose those of the government.

The ruling party and the centrist Justice and Truth Alliance are in a tight race for Sunday's presidential and parliamentary elections.

"We are a herd of animals manipulated by an army of villains ... If every Romanian read the papers nobody would ever vote for these people who think they are immortal," said Vasile Lucaciu, a 38-year-old businessman.

President Ion Iliescu said he didn't know whether the transcripts were genuine, but nonetheless accused the ruling party's former secretary general, Cozmin Gusa of stealing them. Gusa denied the charge.

Gusa said at least one document relating to a meeting before he left the party was genuine. He is now a senior member of the centrist Justice and Truth Alliance.

The influential Evenimentul Zilei newspaper, which broke the story on Tuesday — has run eight broadsheet pages with the purported transcripts over two days. Three other dailies followed, reprinting the documents.

"It is the first time in history when transcripts of discussions of a governing party reach the press," the Ziua newspaper said in an editorial on Wednesday. The paper devoted 13 pages to the documents.

"We are used to seeing them (the government) in the way they want to appear. With their shell taken off, we discover they are people wound up like others about their worries, their passions, the need to be better ... obsessed with the need to win," Ziua said.

In one document, former Justice Minister Rodica Stanoiu allegedly asks whether she should give "the green light" to a criminal investigation of opposition leader Traian Basescu, who is Bucharest mayor and running for president.

Florin Georgescu, a senior party member allegedly speaks about repeatedly intervening in various public spending court cases on ruling party members' behalf.

In another document, Senate chairman Nicolae Vacaroiu allegedly speaks about rigging votes in the Senate with the help of electronic voting, by voting on behalf of lawmakers who are absent.

None of the three officials has commented on the documents.

The documents were available on an anonymous Web set up on Tuesday that has since been blocked, but another site was set up Wednesday. The mirror Web site set up on Yahoo.com was overloaded by users, prompting rumors that ruling party supporters were trying to shut it down.

  In the Black Sea port of Constanta, one voter, archaeologist Gabriel Custurea said he would vote against the government after reading the newspaper reports.

"I have nothing left to say," the 51-year-old said. "It is the first time since communism ended that there is certainty that the government is manipulating its own people."