This Friday, the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the first round of the presidential elections held on November 24, which the pro-Russian Calin Georgescu won, so the electoral process must be repeated.
The high court decided “unanimously” to annul “the entire electoral process related to the election of the president of Romania” when the second round between the ultranationalist Georgescu and the pro-European Elena Lasconi was ready to be held this Sunday.
“The electoral process for the election of the president of Romania will be restarted in its entirety, it is up to the Government to establish a new date for the election,” adds the court in a decision unprecedented in the 35 years of democracy in the Balkan country of 19 million. of inhabitants.
The brief statement announcing the decision does not provide information on the reasons for this annulment, and merely states that these will be published in the full text of the decision in the Official Gazette.
This annulment, which has caused a new upheaval in a country that has experienced a political earthquake since Georgescu against the odds won the first round with 22.9% of the votes, occurs when the polls had already opened in the second round. round for Romanians in the diaspora.
This decision comes after several intelligence reports declassified on Wednesday by the current president, Klaus Iohannis, confirmed that Georgescu’s campaign was driven by an interference strategy linked to a “state actor”, identified by the Romanian press as Russia. .
A network of 25,000 TikTok accounts and Telegram groups coordinated since 2022 amplified Georgescu’s presence, backed by one million euros in external financing, payments to influencers and advanced techniques to evade ‘bot’ detection.
Furthermore, another report indicates that 85,000 cyber attacks were recorded against Romania attributed to Russia, aimed at dividing society and promoting anti-Western narratives.
Georgescu has been maintaining that he did not spend anything on his campaign and that everything is an attack against him and his candidacy.
The far-right candidate did not have the support of any party, he barely gave interviews or rallies and focused his campaign on social networks, especially TikTok, where he achieved hundreds of millions of views.
Days after the presidential elections, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) won Sunday’s legislative elections with 22.6% of the votes, while the ultranationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) came in second place with 18. 1%.
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