The News
Romania’s constitutional court annulled the result of the country’s first-round presidential election on Friday, saying it had received evidence of alleged Russian interference.
The court said the decision was made to ensure “correctness” and “legality,” after the Romanian security services released documents suggesting Russia had engaged in a meddling campaign on social media to favor the winning far-right candidate Călin Georgescu.
Georgescu, a pro-Russia ultranationalist independent, rose to popularity on TikTok in recent weeks, shocking Romania and its Western allies with his win. He had been scheduled to face centrist candidate Elena Lasconi in a runoff Sunday, which now won’t take place.
SIGNALS
Romanian democracy is in ‘crisis mode’
Both the far-right and liberal reformists in Romania have accused the judiciary of manipulating revelations of alleged foreign influence to keep establishment parties in power, Politico reported. Georgescu claims the release of classified documents — showing how Russia paid for content on TikTok supporting his candidacy, without it being marked as campaigning — is a coordinated attempt by the state to block his election bid, the BBC reported. A political consultant based in Bucharest told The Associated Press that the decision amounts to a “crisis mode situation for the Romanian democracy… The problem is here, do we have the institutions to manage such an interference in the future?”
A ‘second revolution’ for Romania
Georgescu’s ascendence to far-right presidential frontrunner marks something of a “second revolution” in Romania, 35 years after the country toppled its communist dictatorship, the Financial Times’ foreign editor argued. For the bulk of his supporters, Georgescu’s anti-establishment, anti-EU, and anti-vax message resonates most: “There is a lot of discontent and accumulated tensions in society… The two big parties were failing to deliver. There is an impression of corruption, fatigue and big failure,” a politician who ran as an independent in the first round of the presidential election said.