In a globally unprecedented move, Romania’s Constitutional Court overturned the presidential election results after Romania’s intelligence agency alleged foreign interference through social media.
The episode makes Romania the first country to overturn election results due to allegations of foreign meddling through social media, a key flashpoint since allegations began prominently emerging globally after the 2016 U.S. election. In Romania’s case, the court overturned the results after a declassified report from its intelligence agency alleged foreign interference via TikTok.
The report came as Romania’s political establishment tried to figure out how Călin Georgescu, 62, running without a party, came in first in the first round of elections with 22.9% of the vote. His rise blindsided the entire Romanian political scene, especially as he hadn’t participated in any debates, didn’t register significantly in opinion polls, and didn’t belong to a party, something almost unheard of in Romanian politics.
Instead, Georgescu ran an almost exclusively online campaign, centering on TikTok edits of himself. The edits were usually clips of his speeches interwoven with him riding on horseback, swimming in icy mountain waters, or fighting in judo sessions, among other activities. His account quickly went viral, garnering 3.8 million likes and 298,000 followers, while his videos routinely receive millions of views, Politico reported.
Romania has the largest share of per capita TikTok users in Europe, with roughly half of its 19 million population being users of the app, according to data from the World Population Review.
Georgescu was indignant after Friday’s decision, accusing the court of launching “practically a formalized coup d’état.”
“Today, the Romanian state has trampled on democracy,” he said. “We wrote history. It is time to show that we are a brave people. Democracy is under attack. … On this day, the corrupt system made a pact with the devil. I have only one pact — with the Romanian people and God.”
“The power lies in each one of us, the Romanian people do not give in. Be confident, be brave. Today is just the beginning of a new page in the history of this country,” Georgescu continued.
His TikTok supporters mentioned in the intelligence report were also defiant.
“I appear on the declassified lists as the largest account that supported Călin Georgescu and I also appear as one of the people who continue to support him. And I support him, I don’t back down, I walk alongside him,” Călin Donca, a pro-Georgescu TikToker with 680,000 followers and the first influencer listed in the report said in a post.
He speculated that Georgescu could be thrown in prison for 10-20 years for high treason.
The report from Romania’s security agency, declassified on Wednesday, alleged that paid influencers boosted Georgescu’s account in the lead-up to the election and that some accounts supporting him showed bot-like behavior. The scale of the effort led to speculation that a foreign actor was behind it – not stated in the documents but understood by analysts to likely mean Russia.
“Voters’ freedom to form an opinion includes the right to be correctly informed before making a decision. More specifically, voters’ freedom to form an opinion implies the right to obtain correct information about candidates and the electoral process from all sources, including online, as well as protection against unjustified influence, through illegal and disproportionate acts … on voting behavior,” the Romanian Constitutional Court said, warning that political advertising could become a “vector of disinformation.”
The announcement came just two days before the second round of the election was to be held between Georgescu and Elena Lasconi of the centrist, pro-EU Save Romania Union party.
The Constitutional Court had previously called for a recount, after a senator from the country’s largest party, the Social Democratic Party, or PSD, alleged fraud. The recount failed to uncover any widescale fraud, only finding that the PSD candidate was further behind than shown by the first count.
Reactions in Romania were mixed, with Georgescu’s opponents celebrating the decision and his supporters denouncing it.
Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who faced an upset loss in the election, praised the ruling as “the only fair solution.”
“The Romanians’ vote was blatantly distorted as a result of Russia’s intervention,” he said. “The presidential elections must be rerun.”
George Simion, President-elect Donald Trump’s ally and leader of the right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians, or AUR, who himself garnered 14% of the vote, expressed outrage over the results. He had thrown his support behind Georgescu in the second round.
“Shame!!! Coup d’état in full swing,” he said, though urged his supporters against protesting, arguing that “This system must fall democratically!”
Constitutional Court
just annulled the entire electoral process for the presidential elections, i.e. both rounds.
SHAMEFUL!!!
Coup d’etat in full force!
We are not taking to the streets,
we will not be challenged,
this system must fall democratically!God bless Romania!
—
(@georgesimion) December 6, 2024
Perhaps Romania’s most famous resident known by the United States, controversial influencer Andrew Tate, denounced the court’s move and attempted to discredit the human trafficking charges against himself.
Georgescu has garnered international attention for expressing several fascist views. He described Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, founder of the syncretic fascist Iron Guard, and Ion Antonescu, leader of Romania during World War II and ally of Nazi Germany, as “heroes.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Particularly notable are his views on NATO, Russia, and Ukraine. In interviews, Georgescu said that Romania wasn’t ready to independently handle diplomacy and strategy and should instead rely on “Russian wisdom,” the Guardian reported. Local media reported that he has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a man who loves his country” and called Ukraine “an invented state,” a line frequently used by Putin and the Russian state.
Georgescu has criticized the establishment of a NATO missile defense system at the Deveselu Military Base, one of Putin’s main contentions before the invasion of Ukraine.
