Romania is experiencing days of great turmoil. The Constitutional Court has postponed this Friday the decision to annul the first round of the presidential elections – held on November 24 and won by the far-right and pro-Russian candidate, Calin Georgescu – to next Monday until it has the result of the vote count that requested on Thursday. The postponement comes just two days before a highly contested legislative election is to be held, in which the main far-right party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), has a chance of winning. Another option far from the traditional parties, although without ties to Georgescu.
The president of the Permanent Electoral Office explained this Friday in an intervention on Radio Romania Actualității that, in the event that the Constitutional Court decides to cancel the first round of the presidential elections, Romanians will be called to the polls again on December 15 for the first round and the 29th of the same month for the second round.
To increase the security of the recount, the electoral authority sent a circular this Friday to all the offices where the process is taking place so that the results are not disclosed. “We draw attention to the obligation to preserve the maximum rigor of confidentiality of the data recorded in the centralizing minutes relating to the result of the count of validly cast votes and null votes,” they detailed in the note.
However, the feeling of chaos already permeates the entire electoral process, which could benefit far-right parties, according to analysts. Precisely the last survey released this Friday, before the Constitutional Court announced, after two hours of deliberation, that it will analyze whether to annul the elections, recommends that AUR, headed by the extremist George Simion, would obtain 22.4% of the votes compared to 21.4% of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which has led the polls so far.
For its part, the Save Romania Union (USR) – of the other finalist candidate for the presidential elections, the conservative Elena Lasconi – would achieve 17.5%, while the National Liberal Party would remain with 13.4%. The Democratic Union of Hungarians of Romania (UDMR), which has almost always supported governments since the country achieved democracy 35 years ago, would enter Parliament as the fifth party, with 5.5%.
Georgescu lacks the political faction to run in these legislative elections, but the Young People’s Party (POT, an acronym that also means “I can” in Romanian), has always supported him. However, the polling companies reveal that this party would not be able to overcome the legal threshold of 5% to enter Parliament. Neither does the party of the equally radical and pro-Russian Diana Şoșoacă (SOS).
For its part, Elena Lasconi’s USR party has denounced this Friday “a new abuse of the system controlled by Marcel Ciolacu [actual primer ministro] and the PSD”, after the Central Electoral Office decided to prohibit the representatives of the formations in the electoral offices from providing information about the vote count.
“The recount process is a total fraud scheme. The BEC circular [oficina electoral] today [por este viernes] It talks about hiding minutes and has no legal basis. On the contrary, the Romanian Constitution guarantees the right of people to have access to any information of public interest, and the electoral result of the recount process is categorically of public interest,” said USR campaign coordinator Cristian Seidler. The Electoral Office had already rejected USR’s proposal to record the entire counting process.
Only 2,700 votes separate Lasconi and the social democrat Ciolacu, so the recount could give second place to the current head of the Executive. However, the politician has already said that in that case he would withdraw from the elections, leaving center-right politics step by step to face the second round.
The Supreme Council of Defense of the Country (CSAT) on Thursday provided the legal bases to annul the first round and eliminate Georgescu from the presidential race, as was done with Şoșoacă. Specifically, the CSAT indicated that the candidate received preferential treatment during his campaign on TikTok. The Chinese platform has been accused, in addition to favoritism, of ignoring the decision of the Central Electoral Office to mark materials linked to the elections and political formations as electoral propaganda.
“Georgescu’s fraudulent campaign on TikTok is not the same as electoral fraud. No parties reported fraud during the voting or vote counting process. To date, no one has provided legal evidence to order the cancellation of the first round,” says journalist Cristian Pantazi. “The recount process completely escapes public scrutiny, observers, and in some districts the candidates do not have representatives. Furthermore, carrying it out is so technically complicated that errors occur, not to mention acts of bad faith,” he adds.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, declared this Friday in a press conference that Russia has not been involved in the elections in Romania or in those of other countries, the Russian state agency Tass reported. “[En Rusia] We are not in the habit of meddling in the elections of other countries, in this case those of Romania. Any accusation in this regard is absolutely unfounded, rather it is a way of imitating the trend that exists in the West in this regard,” Peskov said.
