#anti calin georgescu

[endless----love]

A ieșit din bârlog și kuliokarul (iubitorul de pungi negre cu calendar pe ele) și lingecurul nr. #1 al lui Putin în Republica Moldova, Igor Dodon. Exact ce ne mai lipsea🤦🏻‍♀️

[latestnews-now]

Romania is witnessing a political earthquake as far-right populist Calin Georgescu faces reformist Elena Lasconi in the December 8 presidential runoff. Georgescu’s surprising rise disrupted predictions, while Lasconi aims to become Romania’s first female president. Learn about the candidates, their agendas, and what this means for the country’s future. Stay updated on Romania's evolving political landscape—don’t miss this deep dive into history in the making!

[darkmaga-returns]

There is new turmoil during the final month of the Political Year from Hell emerging in Romania after the constitutional court annulled the presidential election. Calin Georgescu, who the media declared as a far-right extremist, won the election. The establishment cried “RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE!” and has refused to acknowledge the results.

Georgescu is a critic of NATO and the neocons. He does not support the ongoing war nor does he adhere to the Build Back Better agenda of the New World Order. President Klaus Iohannis released declassified documents ahead of the election that claim Russia interfered in the election by promoting the candidate on social media, TikTok in particular. The establishment also claimed Russia launched 85,000 cyber attacks that primarily targeted social media platforms.

How many nations have blamed Russia for interfering in their elections in recent years? More so, why do we allow them to continue perpetuating this lie when no concrete evidence has been found?

The press release called into question Article 146(f) of the Constitution states that elections must be legal. The courts had already demanded a recount of first votes, and now, the secondary election against Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union Party has been permanently canceled. The election cycle must now restart and the people’s wishes must be silenced.

Georgescu ran on a platform of ending Romania’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war and vowed to end all funding to Ukraine. He does not believe in climate change and does not want to decimate Romania’s energy industry to accommodate net zero emission goals. Georgescu also questioned the COVID narrative. All of his leading speaking points were anti-establishment, thus, the establishment ensured he could not take office.

[mariacallous]

A politician who praised notorious Romanian antisemites and Nazi collaborators has won the first round of his country’s presidential election.

Calin Georgescu ran independently after leaving Romania’s far-right party, Alliance for the Union of Romanians, following his comments and amid accusations that he was pro-Putin. He will now face a liberal reformer, Elena Lasconi, in next week’s runoff; it will be the first election since the end of communism in which Romania’s centrist party is not an option.

Georgescu’s outsized showing — he took home 22% of the vote, far more than the 10% polls had suggested he would win — comes amid a wave of electoral successes for right-wing populists across Europe and beyond. In Germany, a far-right political party won a state election for the first time since the Holocaust this fall; weeks later, a far-right party founded by former Nazis won Austria’s national election.

Geert Wilders, an anti-immigrant right-wing politicians, came in first in the Netherlands’ national election last December, not long after a politician once photographed wearing a Nazi armband won Italy’s election. And the far right in France posted stronger-than-expected results in the country’s surprise elections this summer.

Unlike those parties and politicians, which traded on anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic sentiment, Georgescu — a 62-year-old former soil scientist — did not outline a thorough policy platform during the campaign. He gained attention for his social media posts, particularly on TikTok, the video app accused by lawmakers in the United States and Europe of promoting antisemitism and allowing foreign actors to covertly influence elections.

Georgescu previously went viral with his praise for two fascists who led Romania in the 1930s and ’40s.

Speaking on a primetime news show in February 2022, Georgescu, a sustainability expert formerly affiliated with the United Nations, explained why he had cited Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as a national “hero,” saying Codreanu “fought for the morality of the human being.”

The comment immediately drew widespread condemnation, including from Jewish groups, because Codreanu led the fiercely antisemitic Legionnaire Movement, which espoused an extreme version of ethnic and religious nationalism that involved political murders and acts of terrorism, until his execution in 1938.

Two years later, the group entered the government of Romania’s pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu, where it stayed until the following January, when it mounted a pogrom in the capital of Bucharest in which more than 120 Jews were killed and several synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed. The pogrom was intended as an uprising against Antonescu’s government, which the Legionnaire Movement believed was insufficiently aggressive in pursuing a campaign against Romanian Jews.

Georgescu also referred to Antonescu, under whose rule at least 280,000 Jews were killed and who was executed in 1946 for war crimes, as a “martyr.” 

His opponent Lasconi, a former journalist, ran on an anti-corruption platform but also holds some socially conservative views on topics including marriage. Lasconi’s daughter, Oana, is an anti-Zionist activist who posted a photo on Instagram hugging and kissing her mother while wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf, in the run-up to the first-round elections. If she wins she would become the first female president in the country’s history.

There are around 8,900 Jews currently living in Romania, according to the World Jewish Congress. Romanians head to the polls again on Dec. 8 for the runoff.

[thefree-online]

Coup in EU State- NATO's 'Door for War' Base in Romania-goes ahead -Election results Canceled to stop anti NATO Georgescu winning run-off

NATO is using Romania as “a door for war,” aiming to launch a major offensive into Russia, independent presidential candidate Calin Georgescu has warned. on 12 Jan, 2025 06:36 from banned News by Kit Klarenberg | Substack via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-FyA Thousands Protest in Romania to Support anti NATO Candidat Georgescu The expansion of the MK Air Base is aimed at starting a…

[cyberbenb]

Romanian constitutional court annuls results of presidential election's first round

The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election, which had been led by anti-NATO, pro-Russian independent candidate Calin Georgescu, Digi24 repor Source : kyivindependent.com/constitut…

[deblala]

NATO Has Carried Out A Coup Against The Romanian People And Is Openly Establishing A Dictatorship – The Populist Anti-Globalist Winner, Călin Georgescu Has Decried These Actions As Outrageously Naked Tyranny

https://www.infowars.com/posts/nato-has-carried-out-a-coup-against-the-romanian-people-and-is-openly-establishing-a-dictatorship-the-populist-anti-globalist-winner-calin-georgescu-has-decried-these-actions-as-outrageousl

[darkmaga-returns]

The first round of Romania’s presidential election saw candidate Calin Georgescu, who is critical of NATO, gain significant support, prompting a swift response from the US with veiled threats.

Why is Romania so crucial to US interests that it would threaten to withhold security cooperation and investments over political shifts?

- A former member of the Warsaw Pact, Romania is now a part of NATO’s eastern flank and stands at the forefront of the bloc’s efforts to threaten Russia.

- Romania’s Black Sea coast make it a convenient route for shipping weapons to Kiev.

- NATO military infrastructure in Romania serves as a springboard to launch drones – such as the MQ-9 Reaper, for example – to spy from neutral airspace over the Black Sea on Russia’s activities and to potentially coordinate Ukrainian attacks against Russian territory.

- Its status as a Black Sea country helps NATO justify its naval presence in that particular part of the globe.

[darkmaga-returns]

We saw the cancelation of the Romanian election in December 2024, the final month of the Political Year from Hell. Calin Georgescu, who the media declared as a far-right extremist, won the election. The establishment cried, “RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE!” and has refused to acknowledge the results. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Sunday to demand President Klaus’ resignation.

The media is not covering this story anywhere as the establishment fears mass civil unrest. The Romanian people are understandably outraged that their government is completely ignoring the democratic process and denying them the right to vote for their future president.

The neocons are behind this utter disregard for democracy. The establishment has blamed Russia and TikTok for interfering in their election. Yet, the clear reason that they will not permit Georgescu to take office is due to his anti-NATO stance.

NATO’s largest exercise for 2025, Steadfast Dart 2025 (STDT25), is taking place in Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. Over 10,000 allied military personal from nine NATO nations are partaking in this joint exercise. As explained by the Sofia Globe, “The exercise involves air, land, naval and special operations forces; 17 ships; more than 20 aircraft and helicopters, including EF2000, F16, AV 8B HARRIER fighters and A400 transport aircraft; more than 1500 pieces of military equipment, including tanks, multiple launch rocket systems, self-propelled artillery, infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and armoured personnel carriers (APCs).”

[mariacallous]

The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR in Strasbourg on Tuesday ruled against Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu’s request for it to suspend the Romanian Constitutional Court’s decision to annul November’s presidential elections and order a rerun.

The ECHR said it had rejected Georgescu’s request for an urgent ruling because the matter “fell outside of the scope” of the court’s competence.

The decision means the annulment remains in effect while Georgescu’s case is considered in full by the ECHR.

Georgescu, a populist politician known for his anti-NATO and pro-Russia stance, won the first round of  presidential polls on November 24. His victory signalled that EU-member Romania risked joining the region’s growing trend toward far-right populism.

Had he won the presidency – which has oversight of foreign policy and defence – it would have thrown into doubt Romania’s continued support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and marked a shift in the country’s geopolitical trajectory.

Georgescu’s surprise win led Romania’s top court on December 3 to order a complete re-run of the election, citing alleged manipulation of public opinion by a “foreign state”, likely referring to Russia.

The Constitutional Court said it annulled “the entire electoral process concerning the election of the president of Romania”, as the procedures for a free vote had not been upheld.

In his complaint to the ECHR, Georgescu sought to compel Romania’s authorities to organise a second round of voting against pro-Western rival Elena Lasconi, claiming violations of his right to free elections and a fair trial due to the annulment process

Prior to the ECHR’s decision, Georgescu’s appeals to Romanian courts were unsuccessful.

Early this month, the centrist and centre-left parties in Romania’s ruling coalition agreed to hold the presidential election on May 4, with a potential run-off scheduled for two weeks later.

Georgescu has announced he will run again and currently leads in the polls, although the credibility of these surveys has been questioned following his unexpected victory last time.

[mariacallous]

As the war in Ukraine grinds into its fourth year, European leaders can do little more than sit and wait to learn what U.S. President Donald Trump’s supposed plan is to end the conflict, or whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will respond to Trump’s recent threat of tariffs and sanctions.

Few believe Putin will call time on Russian hostility to the West, which is why many officials have argued that 2025 will see a dramatic escalation in the Kremlin’s propaganda war.

“Putin doesn’t have the intent or capacity to use conventional threats against the West, but he can still use unconventional or ‘hybrid  warfare to seek to divide the West, especially in Europe,” said John Foreman, the United Kingdom’s former defense attaché to Moscow and Kyiv.

Between a rise in populism, distrust between nations, and economic uncertainty across the continent, it’s a sunny forecast for a disruptor like Putin. “Putin might look at Europe and see cracks in unity that he can stick in a crowbar and pull open,” said Mark Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

Why, given all the problems he has on his plate, might Putin want to spread disunity in Europe? “The West is far more powerful than Russia, whatever metric you use,” Galeotti said. “If you can paralyze countries politically, you drastically diminish their ability to do things like provide support for Ukraine or coordinate policy against Russia.”

The Kremlin has a long history of using hybrid warfare tactics to disrupt European politics. Whether it’s Russian-sponsored hackers going after government databases or disinformation drives, the aim is the same: to spread doubt and discredit the governments in charge of Russia’s adversaries.

This year could be a blockbuster one for European politics. France is stumbling from crisis to crisis after President Emmanuel Macron’s snap election over the summer backfired—all to the benefit of Marine Le Pen, a far-right Putin ally. Germany will hold federal elections in February, where clashes over immigration could see the far-right Alternative for Germany party finish in second place—a big deal in a country that has coalition governments. The far-right, pro-Kremlin Freedom Party has just formed a government in Austria. And in the U.K., immigration will dominate high-profile local elections set to take place in May.

Political turmoil in Europe has left citizens receptive to Russian disinformation. And there will be plenty of opportunities in 2025 for Russia’s troll armies to get stuck in.

In 2024, after the second round of Romania’s presidential election was controversially canceled, websites associated with the Kremlin published multiple articles with wild claims, ranging from the European Union interfering in Romanian elections to the events in Romania being part of another coup by the United States.

In reality, the elections were canceled after Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round’s results due to allegations of significant Russian interference. It just so happens that the winner of that first found was Calin Georgescu, a far-right independent candidate who had vowed to end aid to Ukraine.

A quick scan of the EU’s disinformation tracker, EUvsDisinfo, shows that Romania is hardly the only case.

Russia also stands accused of similar interference in Moldova’s presidential election, which the pro-EU, anti-Kremlin candidate won by a whisker last November, and Georgia’s election, in which the pro-Russia Georgian Dream party won—resulting in country-wide protests.

Elections are naturally vulnerable to interference in the digital age. European officials are increasingly concerned about what tricks the Kremlin might pull when Moldova goes to the polls later in 2025, this time for parliamentary elections.

Moldova is important because of the role it plays in the tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Moldovan territory includes Transnistria, a separatist region internationally recognized as being under Russian occupation.

NATO officials are particularly concerned with how the Kremlin might react to news that Transnistria’s government, which is sympathetic to Moscow, will refuse EU gas this winter. The EU made provisions to provide non-Russian gas to countries after a five-year deal between Russia and Ukraine expired; the deal had allowed the transit of Russian gas to EU states though Ukraine.

European officials fear that Russia, which has weaponized energy in the past, will use the energy crisis to “blame Ukraine and Moldova” as citizens in Transnistria “freeze their tits off,” as one NATO official said.

An EU source working on Russian disinformation said that they had already seen instances of Russia using the gas shortages as a propaganda tool in European countries.

The criticisms Russia might aim at Ukraine and Moldova are obvious: Ukraine cut off the supply, while Moldova has hitched itself ideologically to the EU, leaving Transnistria on its own.

Wider criticism of the EU could follow if gas prices increase significantly after relatively mild winters have prevented dramatic spikes since the start of the war in 2022. There are already a handful of European leaders who are sympathetic to Putin and have dragged their feet on supporting Ukraine—notably Slovakia and Hungary.

Indeed, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico shocked his European counterparts when he traveled unexpectedly to Moscow last December to talk about gas. “The way it was spun in Russian media wasn’t even, ‘Look, we have friends in Europe,’ but ‘look at the power our gas has, dragging European leaders to beg with us,’” an EU source said.

In theory, this disinformation could lead to leaders demanding the EU make exceptions to Russian gas, critical to its economy. It could make leaders think twice before giving more support to Ukraine. Or it might bolster Russia’s voice as Putin prepares to negotiate a deal with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The conditions for disinformation to thrive in Europe in the coming years are almost perfect. The continent’s politics are divided and have no single policy priority. Countries are concerned about everything from inflation to migration, and they are increasingly in search of radical solutions.

Meanwhile, U.S. tech giants like Meta and X are removing moderation policies that regulate content, meaning lies that stoke these fires could become more common.

One man stands to gain from all this. If Putin can use the next few years to disrupt and confuse the West, it could make his monomaniacal vision for the future of eastern Europe easier to achieve.

[mariacallous]

The far-right in Romania used to whip up ethnic tensions with the Hungarian minority as a way to win votes; now they’re seeking common cause.

On December 18, International Minority Rights Day, Calin Georgescu took to Facebook to address “all ethnic communities” in Romania. He called them “colleagues and friends” and promised that “your identity and mother tongue will always be guaranteed”.

Less than two weeks earlier, Georgescu’s shock victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential election had been overturned by the country’s Constitutional Court, which scrapped the scheduled run-off citing foreign interference on behalf of the far-right candidate.

A date of May 4 has been set for the election re-run. Meanwhile, Georgescu has continued to campaign.

At first glance, his Facebook message addressing Romania’s ethnic minorities hardly chimes with his far-right, nationalist politics; for decades, the far-right in Romania has sought to incite conflict with minority Hungarians, who account for five per cent of the voting population. Now, it seems, they are changing tack.

Analysts say the far right’s minority messaging signals a new strategy for mobilising voters, as domestic ethnic animus loses power in electoral politics.

Instead, conservative values and sexual identity politics – combined with pro-Russian, anti-European Union, and anti-NATO orientations – are uniting an international coalition of right-wing leaders and, in Romania, serving as an increasingly effective basis for right-wing mobilisation.

Before the court cancelled the run-off, the main Hungarian minority party in Romania – the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania, RMDSZ – had endorsed Georgescu’s centre-right opponent, Elena Lasconi, but multiple stories in Hungarian-language media outlets have pointed to evidence of significant support among Hungarians in Romania for Georgescu.

“Georgescu has appealed to a significant part of the Hungarian community in Transylvania using radical rhetoric and ‘anti-elite’ messages,” said Hunor Tokes in a December 11 report for Transtelex, the Cluj-Napoca-based independent media outlet covering minority Hungarian issues. Tokes cited a poll by the CURS research centre that found that 18 per cent of minority Hungarians planned to vote for the far-right candidate before the run-off was scrapped.

Such support may signal a shift towards a different kind of international, values-based wedge politics, said Laszlo Foszto, a cultural anthropologist and co-founder of the Pluralism in Transylvania advocacy group. This values-based politics encompasses Georgescu’s “pro-peace” message as well as his anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.

“Value choices are increasingly important,” Foszto told BIRN, “even to the point of overriding ethnic loyalty”.

Ethnic identity not the only issue

In the 1990s, following the collapse of communism, Romanian far-right nationalists were openly hostile towards Hungarians in Transylvania.

They formed an advocacy group called Romanian Hearth to counter the force of disciplined and unified Hungarian voting blocs and far-right extremist factions were associated with incidents of inter-ethnic violence, including March 1990 riots in Targu Mures that left five people dead and 300 injured.

Far-right Cluj-Napoca mayor Gheorghe Funar, in particular, won national headlines for his provocative anti-Hungarian initiatives, including the raising of Romanian flags around a large Hungarian monument in the city centre. He also claimed to have discovered ancient Romanian ruins beneath the monument, but the archaeological dig he commissioned undermined the monument’s foundations and almost brought it down.

Later, Bucharest-based Corneliu Vadim Tudor, who founded the Greater Romania Party in 2000, picked up the baton of Funar’s anti-Hungarian incitement, notoriously confronting minority MPs who wore Hungarian flag lapel pins in Romania’s parliament.

Funar lost his bid for re-election in 2004, and Tudor died in 2015.

A newer generation, however, continued with the ethnic provocation.

In 2019, George Simion, leader of the nationalist Alliance for Union of Romanians, AUR, claimed he had been assaulted when he and a group of protestors tried to prevent Hungarian activists from renovating a World War I cemetery near Bacau County. Simion fuelled rumours that the activists had felled Romanian gravestones at the site.

The incident was credited with helping propel the AUR party into parliament the following year, but once in the assembly, Simion found common cause with far-right leaders in Hungary, declaring his willingness to cooperate with the country’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, and his support for Hungarian minority rights in Romania.

Georgescu took a similar approach, while also railing against the LGBTQ+ community and questioning Romania’s part in the West’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion since February 2022. Orban is Vladimir Putin’s chief ally within the European Union and has repeatedly criticised the way the West is supporting Ukraine militarily and via sanctions on Moscow.

This supposedly ‘pro-peace’ rhetoric is resonating with minority Hungarians who have large audiences on the same social media platforms as Georgescu. In December, Zsolt Veres, who has 22,000 followers on his TikTok channel focusing on minority Hungarian politics and culture, endorsed Georgescu in a YouTube video, citing a desire for peace that crosses ethnic boundaries. He urged his followers to join him, because “there is nothing worse than war”.

Foszto said it was unlikely that minority Hungarians have made a permanent switch to the far-right camp represented by Georgescu and Simion, but told BIRN: “The considerable number of Hungarians who voted for Georgescu, and took to social media to brag about voting for him, showed clearly that ethnic identity is not the only agent of the politics among the Hungarians in Romania.”

New candidates

The RMDSZ, the main Hungarian minority party in Romania, dismissed talk of a Hungarian defection to the Romanian far-right.

MP Botond Csoma, leader of the RMDSZ caucus in the Romanian parliament, said such claims were pure speculation given the Constitutional Court had scrapped the run-off before anyone had a chance to vote.

“From this perspective, the question of who would have voted for whom and for what reason is totally irrelevant,” Csoma said.

“In the 35-year history of the RMDSZ, there have been times when our voters listened to us and times when they did not,” he told BIRN. “We cannot tell if this is another such moment because the run-off wasn’t completed.”

Though a date has yet to be set for the election re-run, Georgescu has said he is determined to take part. He faces multiple investigations stemming from the autumn campaign, however, and another far-right candidate with similar views was previously barred from running in October.

The delay has seen the field widen, with a number of new candidates tossing their hats into the ring. They include the popular mayor of the capital, Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, who said he would run as an independent but was ready to discuss support for his candidacy with Romania’s pro-European parties.

[mariacallous]

On the morning of Nov. 25, independent candidate Calin Georgescu was declared the winner of the first round of Romania’s presidential elections, taking just under 23 percent of the vote. Yet much of the country was left asking: “Who is Calin Georgescu?”

Other questions quickly followed: Why was he overlooked in opinion polls, and why did mainstream media ignore a candidate capable of such an upset?

The previously unknown Georgescu, an independent with pro-Russian and anti-European views, ran an almost exclusively digital campaign on TikTok. With nearly 9 million users in Romania—about 47 percent of the population—the country boasts the highest percentage of TikTok accounts per capita in the European Union, according to World Population Review.

This algorithm-fueled campaign not only unsettled Romanian authorities but also raised alarm in Western capitals, prompting the European Commission to demand explanations from the Chinese-owned platform and even consider launching an investigation.

Georgescu’s  views on NATO have also set off alarms. Georgescu has not shied away from publicly admiring Russian President Vladimir Putin, frequently calling him a “patriot” and a “leader among leaders.” He has also emulated the Russian leader’s propaganda stunts, portraying himself as a strongman by filming himself on horseback, practicing judo, and swimming in icy mountain lakes.

Like Putin, Georgescu has been a vocal NATO critic, questioning Romania’s membership in the alliance. In a June television appearance when he said: “Why remain in a club that doesn’t provide security for your country?”

Regarding the NATO missile shield in the southern Romanian town of Deveselu, which hosts a NATO base, Georgescu called it a “diplomatic embarrassment” in a speech he gave in 2021 and argued that it “dragged us into a conflict we didn’t need.”

“The shield is part of a confrontational policy. It’s not about peace, as those kissing the ring at various doors would have you believe,” he said at the time, in a statement reported by the online publication G4Media.

Repeatedly, Georgescu has claimed that NATO membership does not provide Romania with the security guarantees that it needs and that “no NATO country would be defended if attacked by Russia.”

Putin has taken note of Georgescu’s overtures. In the past, Georgescu has been praised for his pro-Russian, anti-Western stances by Sputnik and Russia Today, some of the Kremlin’s propaganda outlets, one of which once labeled him a “master strategist.” More recently, on Dec. 2, the Russian dictator mocked the court’s decision to recount votes, suggesting that it was an attempt to remove Georgescu from the race.

Georgescu’s surprising victory in the first round wasn’t the only shock. Marcel Ciolacu, Romania’s prime minister and leader of its largest party, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), failed to advance to the runoff despite being a favorite throughout the campaign. He was narrowly overtaken by Elena Lasconi, the president of a center-right, anti-establishment party called the Save Romania Union (USR) as well as the mayor of a small provincial town. She bested Ciolacu by just 2,740 votes in the initial vote count.

This result, pitting the nationalist, sovereignty-first Georgescu against pro-European Elena Lasconi in the runoff—combined with the behind-the-scenes machinations of Romania’s political establishment—has upended the nation’s political landscape and deeply unsettled society.

On Nov. 28, Romania’s Constitutional Court postponed validating the first-round results, ordering a recount of all votes cast on Nov. 24 following a challenge by a former PSD senator. The complaint described a hypothetical situation and lacked evidence of electoral fraud.

This unprecedented decision—unheard of since the fall of the communist Ceausescu regime 35 years ago—sparked a wave of criticism, with suspicions mounting that the court’s judges, largely appointed by PSD, might seek to overturn the results and replace Lasconi in the runoff with Ciolacu, given the narrow vote margin between the two.

Further fueling these suspicions, the Romanian Permanent Electoral Bureau—tasked with overseeing the recount—banned independent observers and the filming of the process.

Amid this climate of distrust regarding the first-round presidential results, Romania held parliamentary elections on Dec. 1, amplifying the extremist wave that had already gained momentum.

Two new far-right sovereigntist parties, SOS Romania and the Young People’s Party, joined the ranks of the established far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians, collectively securing nearly one-third of the seats in the new legislature. Pro-European parties hold a little more than half of the seats, but forming a functional government appears to be a formidable challenge.

Although Romania narrowly avoided veering more strongly toward extremism, the country’s political future remains uncertain due to the fragmented parliament.

After four days of uncertainty and another electoral blow to the political establishment, the Constitutional Court validated the first-round results on Dec. 2. The recount confirmed that Lasconi’s lead over Ciolacu was, in fact, closer to 5,000 votes, ensuring that the runoff would proceed as scheduled on Dec. 8.

Despite facing a relatively unknown opponent, Lasconi’s pro-European stance does not guarantee an easy path to victory. Many voters from establishment parties lean toward sovereigntist rhetoric and remain hesitant about electing a woman as president.

Lasconi, a former television journalist who was elected mayor of Campulung Muscel in 2020, was thrust into the national spotlight as her party’s presidential candidate after the USR underperformed in local and European elections earlier this year.

With uncertain political backing, Lasconi now faces Georgescu—a candidate who openly expresses pro-Russian and pro-Putin sentiments.

The possibility of Russian interference in the election—drawing parallels with Brexit, the 2016 U.S. presidential race, and recent events in Moldova—is a hot topic in Bucharest. However, Romania’s national security agencies have fumbled their response to the issue.

President Klaus Iohannis, often criticized for prolonged silences and his absence from public discourse, declared the day after the first round that he had “received no reports” from intelligence agencies about “risks of foreign influence on the presidential election,” “external interference in the electoral process,” or “suspicious promotional activity on certain social media platforms.”

Iohannis’s statement was seen as a response to accusations  from politicians, NGOs, and the media linking Georgescu to Russian interests as well as criticism of the president’s own political inaction, which some blame for the rise of populist extremists.

The president has also faced backlash for failing to appoint a civilian head of the Romanian Intelligence Service following the previous director’s resignation in July 2023. With a war raging just across Romania’s border with Ukraine and Russian influence growing throughout the European Union—especially in countries such as Hungary and Slovakia—Iohannis has largely ignored hybrid threats.

Amid mounting criticism, Iohannis convened the Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT), which includes top cabinet ministers and intelligence officials and coordinates defense and national security activities.

In a press release, the CSAT acknowledged that it had found indications of “cyberattacks aimed at influencing the integrity of the electoral process” and confirmed that “Romania, along with other NATO Eastern Flank states, has become a priority target for hostile actions by state and nonstate actors, particularly the Russian Federation.”

These actions, the council’s release stated, aim to “influence public discourse and social cohesion within Romanian society.” The CSAT also confirmed that “a presidential candidate” had received “preferential treatment” on TikTok, which the council accused of violating Romania’s electoral legislation. (Georgescu, however, was not specifically named in the release.)

Yesterday, the Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT) declassified the reports presented in last week’s meeting. The reports noted that a “state actor” coordinated and amplified messaging on TikTok. It also noted that Romania and other Eastern European states had become priority targets for Russian hostile actions, including cyberattacks and sabotage.

All of this merely validated what many Romanians already suspected.

Georgescu’s quiet ascent in a divided society grappling with poverty and a disillusioned electorate raises more questions than answers.

The choice of Romania’s next president—who, despite having relatively limited powers, is responsible for nominating the prime minister—remains pivotal.

Moreover, the president commands the armed forces, appoints civilian intelligence agency directors, and sets the country’s foreign policy.

The Romanian public still knows very little about Georgescu, despite two weeks of intense media exposure. However, the information that has come to light has deeply divided Romanian society in a way that no one else has managed since the fall of the Communist regime.

Before Nov. 24, he was largely overlooked. But the fierce support he has garnered from a segment of the electorate—disillusioned with the traditional political class and viewing state institutions as corrupt and ineffective—has turned Georgescu into a crucial political figure.

The uncertainty surrounding the second round is heightened by the potential impact of votes from Romanians abroad—particularly those living in Western Europe—where Georgescu secured over 43 percent of the vote in the first round.

With the election’s outcome likely determining whether Romania aligns itself with the West or veers toward the East, the stakes for Dec. 8 could not be higher.