Romanian election shock is a warning to the West
A pro-Kremlin “TikTok Messiah” poses a serious threat to NATO and Ukraine
Presidential elections have provoked apathy and hopelessness for Romanians in almost every voting cycle in the 35 years that the country has spent tenuously clinging to democracy. Except this one.
Sandwiched between Russia and Central Europe and controlled by Ottoman and Soviet forces throughout its troubled history, Romania is home to the biggest NATO base in Europe and is an important geopolitical ally in the West’s trade and defence strategies.
This is why the West should be closely watching next week’s presidential election run-off, when, for the first time in 35 years, an anti-establishment, anti-corruption candidate managed to stir enthusiasm in an otherwise apathetic electorate.
No, I don’t mean the liberal reformist Elena Lasconi, backed by the Save Romania Union (USR), billed as the only serious contender, who openly supports a woman’s right to choose an abortion in non-extreme cases and widely regarded as the politically innocent, untainted candidate. I mean Călin Georgescu – the candidate who was so extreme that he was booted from the flagship extremist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), ran as an independent, campaigned almost exclusively on TikTok, and came out on top in the first round of the presidential elections with almost 23% of the vote on 24 November.
The results have caused many in the country to ask themselves: “Who is this guy and where did he come from?”
Before election day, pro-Russian Georgescu was basically invisible in the polls. He seemed to be one of those candidates at the end of the pack that would soak up some of the far-right populist votes of AUR’s star candidate, George Simion. By contrast to other candidates, he had an easy, unscrutinised ride through a campaign which saw leaders of establishment parties crash and burn.
Marcel Ciolacu, leader of the Social Democrat Party (PSD), was favourite to win, with a run-off scramble expected between Lasconi and Simion, who opinion polls predicted to be kneck and kneck.
Yet, if we have learned anything from this packed election year, it is that we should not always trust the surveys. The evening’s exit polls, released as soon as the domestic vote closed, painted a very different picture: Georgescu had climbed up to 3rd, behind Lasconi and ahead of Simion, with Ciolacu leading. A sleepless night of vote counting yielded a totally unexpected result. Georgescu led the vote all night, while Lasconi pulled ahead of Ciolacu at 9:00AM to secure a place in Romania’s first ever run-off election without a PSD candidate on the ballot.
What Romanian society thought was going to be a predictable, disappointing election with mediocre candidates has been turned on its head by, of all things, TikTok. Of course, it was not literally TikTok that got Georgescu elected - people got him elected. But with the help of an efficiently weaponised army of “volunteers” (he maintains he spent no money campaigning on TikTok, which the app does not allow), who posted and shared viral edits of him and spammed comments about him on other posts, he reached millions of people.
Commentators have explained that those who voted for Georgescu tend to feel tend to feel angry and ignored by the ruling class, who are out of touch with the needs of the fourth most unequal society in the EU. They also appear to have been drawn to Georgescu’s calm, pseudo-intellectual way of speaking. His discourse, which has been dubbed “mystico-religious” due to his frequent appeals to God and declaring his victory a “divine intervention,” ranges from anti-NATO and EU (he described the NATO ballistic missile defence shield in Romania is "a disgrace") to condemning C-sections (“a tragedy, it splits the divine string”).
Other notable interventions include his praise for Putin as a “man who loves his country,” maintaining that the state of Ukraine is merely a modern invention, and that Romania would benefit more from aligning with Russia and China than with the West.
Indeed, the ruling class has alienated large numbers of voters from all strata of society, from urbanites who are displeased with a lack of sure-footedness in foreign affairs and rampant corruption to the working classes, who bear the brunt of the corruption. Then there is the diaspora, who Prime Minister Ciolacu angered before the election by saying that people only leave the country because they are not well qualified for a job.
The backlash has already begun: dissatisfied with the role of TikTok’s algorithm in propagating Georgescu’s campaign message, Valérie Hayer, head of the European Parliament’s liberal Renew Europe group called for TikTok’s CEO to appear before the plenary and ensure the company did not infringe the European Union’s Digital Services Act, regarding online content, according to Politico.
Hayer added: "Romania is a warning bell: Radicalization and disinformation can happen all over Europe with harmful consequences."
So what consequences can the West expect after next Sunday’s run-off?
There are signs that the impact of the election may not initially be as grave as observers fear. Romania is a semi-presidential republic, which means that the president represents the country’s interests in foreign affairs, puts forward a candidate for Prime Minister and acts as a mediator between the state and society. Beyond the presidency, the parliament holds key legislative prerogatives. Georgescu capitalised on the war in Ukraine to position himself as the anti-war, anti-NATO party. Yet Doru Frantescu, CEO of EUMatrix, told Euronews that, in the country as a whole, "the pro-NATO attitude is quite strong and in fact if there is some dissatisfaction from NATO's presence it is that NATO did not support Ukraine enough."
However, NATO powers should still shudder at the thought of another potential pro-Russian intrusion into its space, particularly in what was previously considered as a reliable ally. Notably, the Russian media welcomed the news of Georgescu’s victory.
Luckily, many believe it will come to this. Now that the media is taking Georgescu seriously, and scrutinising his outrageous claims and background – including, for example, the fact that he has a criminal record for promoting “people guilty of genocide” after publicly praising former dictator and Nazi collaborator Ion Antonescu – supporters are starting to distance themselves from him.
Much will depend on who the PSD and National Liberal Party (PNL) redirect their voters to support in the run-off due to be held on 8 December. This will be pivotal in deciding the outcome of the election, for while the PNL has announced that it will support Lasconi, it is not yet clear which candidate will be backed by the PSD.
The PSD will also be reluctant to show too much support for the USR candidate, given that parliamentary elections are taking place on 1 December and that these two will be fierce competitors. Polls indicate that they are leading in these elections (although, now any outcome seems possible). Given that parliament has the legislative power in Romania, a majority that isn’t aligned with the vision of either hypothetical presidential candidate will make life difficult for whoever ends up winning the second round of the presidential election.
One thing is certain: even now, at the tail end of a year packed full of elections, the surprises keep on coming.
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