A top Romanian court on Friday annulled the first round of the country's presidential election, days after allegations that Russia led a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right foreigner who won the first round .
The unprecedented ruling by the Constitutional Court – which is final – came after President Klaus Iohannis on Wednesday declassified intelligence that Russia led a sprawling campaign including thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu on social media platforms like TikTok and Telegram.
Despite being a large outsider who reported zero campaign expenses, Georgescu emerged as the favorite on November 24.
He was due to face reformist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party on Sunday, while some 951 polling stations were already opened on Friday abroad. A new date will now be set to relaunch the first round.
But Lasconi strongly condemned the court's decision, calling it “illegal, immoral and which crushes the very essence of democracy.”
“We should have moved forward with the vote. We should have respected the will of the Romanian people. Whether we like it or not, from a legal and legitimate point of view, nine million Romanian citizens, both in the country and in the diaspora, have expressed their preference for a particular candidate through their votes We cannot ignore their will!
She said the issue of Russian interference should have been addressed once the election was over. Some 9.4 million people – or about 52.5 percent of eligible voters – had voted in the first round.
The president serves a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in areas such as national security, foreign policy and judicial appointments. Romania is a member of both the European Union and NATO.
Accounts activated during vote preparation, files suggest
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said in a statement that the cancellation was “the only good solution” following information revealed by intelligence services which revealed that “the vote of the Romanian people had been blatantly distorted following Russian interference.
“At the same time, investigations by the authorities must find out who is responsible for the massive attempt to influence the outcome of the presidential election,” he added on Facebook.
George Simion, leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians, said it was a “coup in full swing” but urged people not to descend into the street.
The intelligence files came from the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunications Service and the Ministry of the Interior.
The same court last week ordered a recount of the first-round votes, adding to the myriad controversies that have engulfed a chaotic election cycle.
Declassified files suggest a pro-Russian campaign used messaging app Telegram to recruit thousands of TikTok users to promote Georgescu. Romanian intelligence services claimed that a TikTok user paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to influencers on the platform to promote content about the candidate.
Some of the thousands of social media accounts used in the campaign were allegedly created years ago but only activated in the weeks before the first round vote, records show.
The information provided by the intelligence services makes it unclear whether Georgescu was aware of the alleged campaign, let alone whether he contributed to it.
The EU wants to hear TikTok
The European Union said Friday it had sent TikTok an urgent request for additional information. The commission previously asked the Chinese platform to keep all records and evidence related to the Romanian elections.
“We are concerned about growing indications of coordinated foreign influence operations online targeting the ongoing Romanian elections, in particular on TikTok,” said Henna Virkkunen, European Commission Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty, the security and democracy, in an article on X.
TikTok has 24 hours to respond to the EU request, officials said at a press briefing in Brussels.
Cristian Andrei, a Bucharest-based political consultant, said the court's decision amounted to a “crisis situation for Romanian democracy.”
“In light of the information about external interference, massive interference in elections, I think it was not normal but predictable, because this is not a normal period at all. Romania is uncharted territory ” he told the Associated Press. “The problem is: do we have the institutions to deal with such interference in the future?”
European lawmakers demanded last week that Georgia's October parliamentary elections be rescheduled within a year, run by an independent electoral administration and conducted under international supervision.
Georgia's president, who plays a largely ceremonial role, has accused the ruling Georgia Dream party of rigging the election with the help of Russia, which previously ruled Georgia from Moscow when it was part of the Soviet Union.
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