2024 for Romania was set to be the Year of Elections, starting with European Parliamentary elections in June and ending with presidential and parliamentary elections in November and December, respectively.
It all seemed to go as expected. Pre-election polls showed a narrow lead either for Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu or for former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana. Nationalist candidate George Simion and liberal candidate Elena Lasconi were polled anywhere between 10 and 20-something percents. Ultra-nationalist rebel Diana Sosoaca was conveniently excluded from the presidential race.
The only question seemed to be who would join Ciolacu in the second round. Even the first exit polls predicted his victory.
The surprise twist came seemingly out of the blue.
After the first couple of hours that showed an almost-tie between Ciolacu and Lasconi, Georgescu emerged as the laughing third.
The results sent shockwaves through the country and beyond the borders, as it seems unimaginable that a candidate with no party backing, without any clear political agenda, basically no electoral budget and no campaign staff could beat the rest.
The “anti-NATO”, “far-right” candidate Georgescu has already refuted the claims circulating in Western media about him wanting to lead his country out of NATO. He also denies having connections to Russia or being a legionnaire (supporter of Romania’s own fascist party before WWII).
The establishment is boiling, nevertheless.
Georgescu’s surprise win prompted pro-European protests across the country – thousands of young people took to the streets in major cities (Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, Iasi, Craiova, Sibiu or Brasov), to express their pro-EU and anti-nationalist views.
Four German NGO-s (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Hanns Seidel) launched an online platform to help undecided voters to “choose” in the upcoming parliamentary elections the candidate and party that matches their political views. So far, about 100,000 users downloaded the app.
Two candidates, Sebastian Popescu and Cristian Terhes, who had basically zero chances to make it anywhere above a couple percents have already called for fresh elections, referring the case to Romania’s Constitutional Court requesting that the court annulled the first round.
Incumbent President Klaus Iohannis convoked the country’s supreme defence council, the CSAT to discuss possible threats against the democratic establishment, a clear reference to a report about a covert activity of thousands of fake accounts leading up to the vote.
TikTok also found itself in the crossfire.
Prime Minister Ciolacu demanded an investigation into Georgescu’s campaign, more specifically its funding and Romanian national media regulator Ancom informed the European Commission that TikTok had “not acted swiftly” to requests to secure the election.
Valérie Hayer, the head of Renew Europe group has already called TikTok’s CEO to come before the European Parliament and answer questions. Probably not surprising after President Macron has also called the platform “deceptively innocent” in 2023.
Though TikTok clearly might have played a role, it should not be forgotten that Georgescu has only 260,000 followers and around 3 million likes – a fraction of the country’s population of 19 million. (In comparison, the other two nationalist firebrands have many more: Diana Sosoaca has more than 481,000 followers, while George Simion more than 734,000.)
It is a lot, but not necessarily enough to explain the results, that have more to do with Georgescu’s message than with his social media that features mostly him exercising (judo and running) and excerpts from TV interviews.
The very same message that led to the rearrangement of the political sphere all around the globe: soaring living costs, high energy prices, economic problems and the feeling of insecurity. In Georgescu’s words, he voted “for the unjust, for the humiliated, for those who feel they do not matter and actually matter the most … the vote is a prayer for the nation”. His (fairly vague) manifesto includes support for Romanian farmers, reducing dependency on imports and ramping up energy and food production.
A message that resonated with the voters more than the others’, coming from a person who is not part of the current ruling regime. The same message that propelled first AUR, then S.O.S. Romania to the parliament and the European Parliament.
From the voter’s perspective, Ciolacu and Lasconi are probably two sides of the same coin as their respective parties (PSD and PNL) are all cozied up in parliament and government, ruling together. George Simion and his AUR party has changed course significantly since it made it into the Romanian parliament, abandoning some of their most radical ideas. Diana Sosoaca, who had great hopes for good results was banned.
This left a vacuum … and that vacuum got filled. Romanian data analysts declared that it was loyal fans and not bots that spread Georgescu’s message. His voters are either young (31 percent of the voters between 18 and 24 voted for him) or are living abroad.
Yet, again, instead of aiming for a constructive dialogue or an in-depth analysis and soul-searching, the reactions are the same as they were before the European Parliamentary elections, or the American elections: the winning candidate is “ultranationalist”, his possible election is “spells big trouble for Romania’s allies in NATO and the EU” and alike.
In a few weeks, Romanians will first vote about their new parliament, then their president.
Polls have already shown a possible swing to the right as it seems that Sosoaca’s S.O.S. Romania and Simion’s AUR could end up with as much as 40 percent of the vote.
The question is when it will dawn upon other political parties what voters are expecting from their politicians.
