Russian meddling scraps far-right win in Romania’s presidential election

Romania’s second round of presidential elections has been cancelled by the courts due to allegations that Russia promoted the far-right pro-Russian winner of the first round, Călin Georgescu, on Tik Tok.

Georgescu has protested the decision, saying that “The Romanian state took democracy and trampled on it,” according to The Financial Times.

He added that the court’s decision was “more than a legal controversy… It is, practically, a coup d’état.”

A mysterious figure who has denied the existence of Covid, questioned the moon landing and claims that water is something other than H20, won 2 million votes in the first round of the elections.

Standing without a party behind him, Georgescu’s main boast at the time of his win in November was that he had not spent a penny on his campaign and still managed to beat his liberal rival, Elena Lasconi.

Russia denies it interfered with the election result, but intelligence agencies in the Romanian capital Bucharest declassified documents containing information on a major influence operation using Tik Tok, the BBC reports.

The documents detailed that more than 100 influencers with more than 8mn followers were paid by Russia to promote Georgescu’s videos, according to The Financial Times.

But his first-round victory was not due only to Russian interference; many Romanians who are weary of the mainstream political class, were impressed with his Make Romania Great Again message.

"The Russians are hugely sophisticated. But it's hugely mistaken to believe all of this was just because of Russia," a former deputy head of Nato Mircea Geoana told the BBC. "There is a whole cocktail of grievances in our society."

According to Romanian journalist Andrei Popoviciu, writing in The Guardian, the “center-left social democrats and center-right liberals have presided over corruption scandals, nepotism, politically connected fraud and opaque use of public funds.”

“People here are not happy with the current regime,” a retired Romania auditor told the BBC. “They've done absolutely nothing for 35 years. Just a few new pavements, that's it.”

The presidential elections will be held again in their entirety in 2025. "We bought ourselves some time. But there is real fury here. And if we don’t do something, we might have a repeat,” Geoana told the BBC.

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