Just over three days after the shocking victory of the independent candidate Calin Georgescudefined as “extreme right”, in the first round of the Romanian presidential elections, people immediately rushed to the buildings of Brussels to invoke the Digital Service Act (Dsa).
In fact, the social media campaign would be under the magnifying glass Georgescu. No later than yesterday Valerie Hayergroup leader of Renew Europe in the European Parliament (the liberal group of Macron And Renzi), asked the CEO to TikTok to “come to this location and ensure that your platform has not violated the provisions of Dsa”, further adding that “Romania is a wake-up call: radicalization and disinformation can happen across Europe, with harmful consequences”. To paraphrase, if I win it’s democracy, if you win it’s “radicalization and disinformation”. What is shocking is not the accusations themselves, in a period like the current one it is more than legitimate to be vigilant about the legality of electoral processes, but the fact that they are made in advance without a shred of evidence.
The excellent result of Georgescuas happens more and more often, had not been predicted by the polls, which instead gave the current Prime Minister the favourite Ion-Marcel Ciolacu. To challenge Georgescu instead, the leader of the centre-right party will be on the ballot on 8 December Elena Lasconicame second by a handful of votes. Perhaps precisely because of the mockery suffered, Ciolacu he lashed out against the campaign TikTok Of Georgescuasserting that the opponent used “a system, I don’t know how legal it is, but I understood how it works. The origin of the financing must be analysed”, for the moment little more than inferences in short.
Yet, as reported by Political and confirmed by Romanian intelligence services before the vote, there were no national security breaches. On the other hand, the 62-year-old Georgescu was a star of TikTok it was a known fact even before the elections, without forgetting that this and all the other platforms were used by all the candidates. The Chinese platform will certainly have acted as a sounding board for the campaign Georgescu (as for the other candidates), but to believe that more than two million Romanians (22.94%) voted for a candidate only because he makes nice videos on TikTok It seems frankly absurd. Evidently his program must have found agreement with a significant portion of the country.
Critic of Born, Georgescu however, he confirmed yesterday in a live stream on Facebook that “I don’t want to abandon the Atlantic Alliance or the European Union. What I want is not to have to kneel down, we should do everything following our national interests”. A position very similar to that of Viktor Orbàn in Hungary e Robert Fico in Slovakia.
The victory of Georgescu in the second round is anything but a given, given that all the traditional Romanian parties will probably converge on the challenger Lasconihowever, one cannot help but notice that unlike all other European countries, where the diaspora generally does not reward right-wing and/or anti-system candidates, the Romanian diaspora has instead rewarded Georgescu with 43.35% of the preferences, clearly separating the two rivals Lasconi (26.8%) e Ciolacu (2.9%).
The final verdict is postponed to December 8, except for RenewEuropethey have already imposed the sentences.
