Despite initially validating it, the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) on Friday, December 6th, unanimously ruled to annul the first round of the country’s presidential elections—just two days before the final round between the two top candidates. The reason for the annulment is alleged Russian interference during the campaign period, claimed by reports that were declassified at the last minute by the country’s top intelligence agencies.
According to Romanian G4Media, which was the first to break the story, the CCR decision not only means that the first round will need to be repeated at an unspecified date picked by the incoming (and probably socialist-led) government, but also that each candidate will need to re-register and go through the validation process again.
This is seen as one of the most problematic aspects, as the Constitutional Court has already prevented another nationalist candidate from entering the initial race due to alleged ties to Russia, so there’s no telling whether the poll favorite Călin Georgescu—whose campaign is suspected to have been propped up by Russia—will even get past validation.
What’s more, in case it gets proven in court that Georgescu won the first round by intentionally employing illegal assistance from another state actor, he could get disqualified from running for office ever again.
The dramatic turn of events came on Wednesday, two days after the court initially validated the first-round results following a recount that found no evidence of electoral fraud. This followed the declassification of five separate reports by intelligence agencies, which detailed suspected foreign interference and were released on the order of outgoing President Klaus Iohannis. The intelligence reports showed that Georgescu’s rise from obscurity to the first place was “not a natural outcome,” and alleged that it was the result of a coordinated social media campaign most likely orchestrated by a foreign “state actor,” i.e., Russia.
Romania’s top intelligence agency, SRI, found an influence network of over 25,000 accounts on TikTok that was initially set up in 2016 but lay dormant until it was suddenly activated two weeks before the first round of the presidential elections to promote Georgescu.
Additionally, over a hundred real influencers (with a combined reach of eight million followers) were recruited to do the same, with a single Romanian entrepreneur paying nearly €1 million alone for their content, up to €950 per post.
Earlier this week, TikTok executives were summoned before the European Parliament to testify about the election, and while they admitted to having identified several networks aiming to influence the Romanian elections, they said these were “very small” operations with only a few dozen fake accounts. However, they were able to track about €360,000 worth of illegal payments sent to influencers for content promotion.
The now-annulled second round was supposed to be the race between the “radical populist” Georgescu and the liberal USR’s (Renew) Elena Lasconi, who only barely beat the socialist PM Marcel Ciolacu (PSD) for second place by less than three thousand votes.
This is why many observers regard the socialist-leaning court’s order to recount and then annul the vote as a scheme to give another chance for PSD and Ciolacu to stay in the race, even if the alleged Russian involvement in the campaign is true.
Romania is a key NATO member located in a strategic position next to neighboring Ukraine and Moldova. It not only houses one of two main bases of NATO’s ballistic missile shield that protects it from the east, but the alliance is currently building its largest-ever European base on its territory, close to the coveted Black Sea. With Georgescu repeatedly stating that he wished to close these NATO facilities, it’s not hard to imagine which candidate Russia would have an interest in supporting.
Now, regardless of what Russia did or didn’t do, the question of how to move forward is an incredibly hard one as both camps feel cheated by the court and the outgoing socialist government.
Despite being the “pro-West” candidate and polls showing that she would lose to the right-wing Georgescu, the liberal Lasconi strongly criticized the decision in a dramatic address on Friday—primarily because chances are she won’t get another chance to qualify for the runoffs.
“God, the people, the truth, and the law will prevail, and will find those guilty for destroying our democracy,” Lasconi said, warning that the CCR decision throws the country into “anarchy” and calling for the elections to resume on the scheduled day to “respect the will of the people.”
Right-wing parties that since endorsed Georgescu also criticized the move, seeing it not only as an attempt by the socialist’s PSD attempt to cling to power but as a maneuver by the establishment as a whole. George Simion, the leader of the largest nationalist party AUR—which threw out Georgescu two years ago for being too “extreme”—called the CCR decision a “coup d’etat” but urged his followers not to take the streets in protest. “The system must fall democratically,” he wrote on X.
Nonetheless, large-scale social unrest is all but guaranteed at this point. According to polls, Georgescu is favored over Lasconi by nearly 58% of the voters, including two-thirds of the socialist PSD (S&D) voters and a third of the centrist PNL (EPP) supporters.
There’s no guessing how much time the country will have to survive in this chaotic state until the new elections either, as picking the date will be the task of the new government that’s still subject to ongoing coalition talks after the recent parliamentary elections that left the Romanian parliament in an unusually fragmented state.
