Last night in Romania the umpteenth political scandal took place. The Central Electoral Office decided to invalidate the application of Calin Georgescu to the next presidential elections, thus preventing him from presenting himself to May consultations. There is no peace for the candidate defined as “extreme right” and “philorusso”, which can still appeal to the Romanian Constitutional Court to invalidate the decision of the electoral office. Given the previous ones, however, for Georgescu there is little hope.
We rewind the tape and return to last year. After winning the first round of the presidential elections, held on November 24th, Georgescu was given in his head in the polls for the second round to the ballot, which should have been carried out on December 8th. However, that consultation never took place, or rather, was not completed. In fact, it was canceled on December 6, when the seats for the Romanian diaspora were already open, by decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court. To support his decision, The Court cited a report of the internal secret services relating to the little transparency of Georgescu’s election campaign on Tiktok.
All postponed to May, with the first round canceled and to be repeated. The controversial decision made by the Romanian authorities had obviously brought great popularity to Georgescu. From 22.94% of preferences obtained in the first round of November there had been a percentage of voting that according to the polls was around 40% (only for the first round).
The strange way of proceeding from the Romanian authorities had raised a sensation even beyond ocean. On February 14, during his speech at the Munich conference conference, the American vice-president JD Vance had mentioned the Romanian case as an example of the authoritarian and anti-democratic drift that the countries of the European Union were taking.
Not even two weeks later the Romanian authorities struck again. On February 26, while he was going to present his candidacy for the renovation of the presidential elections, Georgescu had been stopped by the police and interrogated by the judges of the Public Prosecutor of Bucharest. The accusations, numerous, should be not better specified “instigations to actions against the constitutional order” to the declaration of “false information”, up to the “constitution of an organization of a fascist, racist or xenophobic nature”.
Yesterday the coup de grace: rejected candidacy and the only way out represented by an appeal to the Constitutional Court, which given the precedents will almost certainly not accept the appeal. Immediately thousands of supporters of Georgescu took to the streets. A few hundreds went to the headquarters of the central electoral office and forced the entrance to the building, forcing the Romanian gendarmerie to the physical clash and the use of tear gas to disperse them.
Elon Musk’s comment also arrived last night, who on his platform X defined the exclusion of Georgescu as “a madness”. Shortly afterwards the message of Georgescu also arrived: «A direct blow to the heart of democracy! Europe is a dictatorship and Romania is under tyranny! ».
In the evening the official reasons for the refusal of Georgescu’s candidacy were published. According to the central electoral office “the pronouncements of the Constitutional Court lead to the conclusion that, as regards the candidacy of Mr. Georgescu, this does not meet the legitimacy requirements as the candidate, with the violation of the rules of the electoral procedure, violated the obligation to defend democracy, which is based on correct, intact, impartial votes, in accordance with the law, in the absence of which the law is altered. The foundation of the current constitutional order itself “. Phrases that would seem taken from the Romanian version of the film “My friends”, with his famous supercasters.
Yet it’s all true, and millions of Romanians will put us back. According to the latest surveys Georgescu was permanently above 40% of the preferences, almost one in two Romanian will find himself deprived of his reference candidate for arbitrary decisions of the Constitutional Court, the secret services and the central electoral office. If this is a democracy …
