Romania cancels presidential election after alleged Russian interference

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Romania's Constitutional Court has canceled a presidential election scheduled for Sunday after allegations that Russia used TikTok to promote the leading candidate.

The decision to cancel Sunday's second round of voting and the victory of the first round of Calin Georgescuwhich praised Vladimir Putin, came after Romanian authorities this week released documents indicating that Moscow was seeking to undermine the elections.

But some politicians and analysts have criticized the measure as undemocratic. Opinion polls gave far-right Georgescu a comfortable lead over Elena Lasconi, the second liberal presidential candidate, before the now-cancelled vote.

“The electoral process for the election of the president of Romania will be repeated in its entirety”, with the government set to set a new date for the vote, the court said on Friday.

Costin Ciobanu, an analyst at Aarhus University in Denmark, said the cancellation “deepens uncertainty and polarization within Romanian society, raising serious concerns about the strength of Romanian institutions and democracy “.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Bucharest and other cities to protest against Georgescu in recent days, while a few hundred demonstrated in support of him.

Friday's ruling is the first time a Western court has stepped in to overturn an election due to an alleged Russian attempt to influence the outcome. But it follows a series of attempts by Moscow to influence votes in countries well beyond its traditional sphere of influence.

Maia Sandu, president of neighboring Moldova, narrowly re-election assuredLast month, after what the country's officials said was an attempted vote-buying by Moscow-aligned politicians.

The head of German domestic intelligence also warned that Russia could try to interfere in his country's parliamentary elections next year.

Georgescu's rise in recent weeks has stunned Romania and its Western allies.

His victory in the first round came despite having no party behind him and claiming to have spent “nothing” on his campaign, which took place mainly on social media.

The Romanian National Security Council declassified several documents on Wednesday which alleged that Russia attempted to promote Georgescu on social media platforms and hack the country's electoral infrastructure.

The documents also note that the far-right candidate, whose poll numbers were in the single digits before last month's vote, “received preferential treatment” on TikTok because the Chinese social media platform did not qualify his political advertising videos.

The court's decision to annul the vote comes despite the validation of a recount on Monday that confirmed Georgescu's victory in the first round, in which he won 23 percent of the vote.

Friday's decision was hailed as “the only correct decision” by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who was leading in the polls before the first round. “The Romanian vote was clearly compromised following Russian intervention,” he said.

But Lasconi, who expected to face Georgescu in Sunday's runoff, called the court's decision “illegal and immoral,” adding that the ruling “crushes the essence of democracy: voting.”

She vowed to run again and win the presidency.

Georgescu did not immediately comment on the cancellation of the vote. His spokesperson told the Financial Times on Thursday that the declassified documents were “false marketing” intended to discredit him.

“What the people mentioned in the documents wanted to do in the name of Mr Georgescu without being asked is their own problem,” the spokesperson said. “Mr Georgescu stated that he did not know these people and had never spoken to them.”

Prosecutors opened several investigations following evidence presented by intelligence services.

The US State Department also warned this week of “foreign actors seeking to divert Romania's foreign policy away from its Western alliances”, which it said would have “serious negative impacts on US cooperation in security matters”.