Romania's top court on Friday annulled the first round of the country's presidential election, days after allegations that Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to oust the far-right outsider. won the first round of promotion.
The Constitutional Court's unprecedented decision – which is final – came after President Klaus Iohannis dismissed information on Wednesday that Russia ran a sprawling campaign involving thousands of social media accounts to Calin Georgescu promote across platforms like TikTok and Telegram.
Despite being a big outsider who announced zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on November 24.
He was set to face reformist Elena Lasconi from the Save Romania Union party in a runoff on Sunday, with some 951 polling stations open abroad on Friday. A new date will be arranged for the first round again.
But Lasconi strongly criticized the court's decision, saying it was “illegal, immoral and crushes the very basis of democracy.” “
“We should have gone ahead 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, expressed their preference for a particular candidate through their votes, she said.
She said the issue of Russian interference should be dealt with after the election is over. About 9.4 million people – about 52.5 percent of eligible voters – cast ballots in the first round.
The president serves a five-year term and has important decision-making powers in areas such as national security, foreign policy and judicial appointments. Romania is a member of the European Union and NATO.
Accounts activated when votes are in progress, files suggest
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said in a statement that the annulment was “the only correct solution” after the information leak revealed that “the vote of the people of Rome was significantly distorted due to Russian intervention.”
“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 said in a Facebook post.
George Simion, head of the far-right Alliance for the Romanian Union, said the development was a “coup d'état in full swing” but urged people not to take to the streets.
The intelligence files were 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 votes in the first round, adding to the many controversies that have engulfed the chaotic election cycle.
Declassified files suggest that a pro-Russia campaign used the messaging app Telegram to recruit thousands of TikTok users to promote Georgescu. Romania's intelligence services said that one TikTok user paid hundreds of thousands to influencers on the platform to promote content about the candidate.
Some of the thousands of social media accounts used in the campaign were reportedly created years ago but were only activated in the weeks leading up to the first-round vote, the files said.
It is not clear from the intelligence release whether Georgescu was even aware of the alleged campaign, let alone assisted in it.
The EU wants to hear from TikTok
The European Union said on Friday that it has sent an urgent request to TikTok for more information. The commission previously asked the Chinese-owned platform to keep all the files and evidence related to the Romanian election.
“We are concerned about growing signs of coordinated foreign online influence activities aimed at the ongoing Romanian elections, especially on TikTok,” said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president of the Commission. Europeans for technical sovereignty, security and democracy, in a post on X.
TikTok has 24 hours to respond to the EU's request, officials told a press briefing in Brussels.
Cristian Andrei, a Bucharest-based political consultant, said the court's decision is a “critical situation for Romanian democracy.”
“As a result of the information about the outside intervention, the big intervention in elections, I think that this was not normal but predictable, because these are not normal times at all. Romania is an undocumented territory,” he told The Associated Press. “The problem is here, do we have the institutions to manage such violations in the future?”
EU lawmakers last week urged a re-run of Georgia's October parliamentary election vote within a year, to be run by an independent electoral administration and undertaken with international supervision. national.
The Georgian president, who has a largely ceremonial role, has been accused by the ruling Georgia Dream party of rigging the election with the help of Russia, which previously ruled Georgia from Moscow when which was part of the Soviet Union.
