A Stunned Silence in Romania

November 26th 2024

On Sunday November 24th Romanians went to the polls to vote in the first round of their presidential elections. The results shocked political observers and set off alarm bells in western European capitals. Ultranationalist Călin Georgescu emerged quite literally out of nowhere to secure first place with 22.94% of the vote. This election result has massive potential consequences for Moldova so today we’re going to try and unpack what happened and what it means for the region.

Author’s Note: Due to some work travel and a never ending problem with an apartment remodel¹ I’ve had a bumpy schedule over the last week. I’ll be back soon with a full roundup of the news we missed and some other content unpacking recent international stories and their potential impact on Moldova.

The Election Results

Following a full tally of the votes here are the top candidates and their vote shares:

1. Călin Georgescu (Independent) - 22.94%

2. Elena Lasconi (Save Romania Union - USR) - 19.17%

3. Marcel Ciolacu (Social Democratic Party - SDP) - 19.14%

4. George Simion (Alliance for the Union of Romanians - AUR) - 13.86%

**Correction: in the first version of this article it incorrectly stated that Simion had 18% of the vote. This was a typo and has been updated.

Prior to the election polls showed a tight race with 3 main contenders. Marcel Ciolacu in the lead followed by Elena Lasconi and George Simion. Călin Georgescu barely registered in the polls.

Călin Georgescu photo source facebook

Romania’s Ultranationalist Right

Going into the vote there were serious concerns about the rise of far-right Romanian politician George Simion and the potential that he might make it into the second round. Simion has been banned from entering both Ukraine (since 2000) and Moldova (since 2015). The countries have offered various justifications that basically boil down to this - Simion’s political project envisions annexing Moldova and large parts of Ukraine into Romania. The AUR Party that he leads has constantly refused to denounce WW2 era Romanian fascist leaders and seeks to rebuild “Greater Romania.”

Other top-polling candidates Marcel Ciolacu and Elena Lasconi are more traditional politicians. Ciolacu is currently serving as the Prime Minister of the SDP government and (until resigning today) led a center-left political party. Lasconi is the leader of the USR party which is the 3rd largest in parliament and is a center-right party with an espoused focus on anti-corruption reform. Both candidates have strong pro-EU, pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine stances.

Călin Georgescu is publicly well to the right of Simion. Back in 2020 AUR proposed Georgescu as their candidate for Prime Minister but his extremist positions threatened to fracture the party and led to him leaving AUR. Georgescu has praised Romanian Fascist Dictator Ion Antonescu² and leader of the Iron Guard Corneliu Zelea Codreanu³ as “heroes.” A quote that led to prosecutors opening up a case against him for hate speech. He has a record of ardently pro-Putin speech and has claimed that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is bad for Ukraine. Incredibly he has claimed that the 1989 revolution against Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was a “coup d’état” organized by the West to steal Romanian natural resources.⁴

This is all in addition to the anti-semitism and COVID denialism. He has stated that the virus is not real because he cannot see it and that “the only real science is Jesus Christ.”

What Happened?

Călin Georgescu has no political party, no campaign, zero campaign spending and no campaign headquarters or staff. He registered to run on October 1st. Other than a few flirtations with politics in the past his resume is largely academic, with a background in agriculture and jobs with government and NGOs working on sustainable development. In other words, he does not have a national profile and was not a household name. He did not show up to any TV debates or run anything resembling a typical campaign. Given this, and his non-existence in opinion polling, he received little national media coverage.

What did he have? TikTok.

Out of sight of the major news networks, who were focused on the traditional horse race, something unusual was happening on social media. A concerted campaign featuring hundreds of thousands of TikTok accounts began carpet bombing the platform with the hashtag #CălinGeorgescu. This was belatedly recognized by various online media platforms when editors were alerted to the sudden virality of the candidate by their younger staff. The hashtags were pasted over all political content including news reporting and videos by other candidates. This resulted in the algorithm pivoting to recommend Georgescu broadly and in the last week of the campaign alone he picked up 30,000 new followers and his content views increased to 800,000. Similar processes were afoot on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Journalists have identified many of the accounts promoting Georgescu as having “bot-like” behavior, i.e. they were newly registered accounts with fake photos and seemingly only one purpose in life, #CălinGeorgescu.

TikTok officially bans political content and election advertising. As such, they do not report on or moderate this type of content. Basically, if users don’t check the box “political” (in which case the material would not be allowed) then it gets washed in with all other content. In addition to the hashtags and bots another campaign was happening on the platform where major Romanian influencers all posted videos reading off a copy / paste script promoting the candidate. Romanian media sources were quick to note the similarity to the campaign on TikTok supporting Alexandr Stoianoglo in Moldova’s recent election.

All of this meant that Georgescu’s ultranationalist, “messianic” and pro-Russian content dominated social media in the last days of the campaign.

A Familiar Story…

As the preliminary results began to roll in people immediately realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Georgescu took a clear early lead and was trailed by Marcel Ciolacu and Elena Lasconi who were neck and neck for second place. This resulted in Lasconi making a last minute appeal via social media to diaspora voters saying:

"Dear Romanians from Canada and the USA, it depends on you to keep Romania towards the West, to keep democracy alive. Go to the polls, it depends on each vote to keep our pro-NATO, pro-European path.

It depends on you which road we take!"

Ultimately it was the diaspora vote that allowed her to pull ahead of Prime Minister Ciolacu by a mere 2,740 votes, out of their combined 3.5 million votes.

While Prime Minister Ciolacu is himself pro-EU and pro-NATO he leads a party that has weathered major corruption scandals and is himself a long time incumbent leader. Two facts that would have been very dangerous for him in a second round.

In Moldova 80,000 dual citizens voted in the elections favoring Lasconi by more than 56%. Georgescu came in 6th among voters in Moldova with around 3% (slightly less than Simion).

So Romania’s diaspora narrowly boosted a woman from an anti-corruption center-right party into a runoff with a pro-Russian “independent” political no-name. It’s not hard to hear some echos here of recent Moldovan elections. The difference of course is that Mr. Georgescu is *significantly* more radical than Stoianoglo and he is leading in the first round.

Elena Lasconi photo source facebook

The Stakes

Romania’s constitutional system empowers the president with similar powers to that of Moldova’s. The president has limited influence on parliament but broad duties in international affairs and serves as the commander in chief of the armed forces.

Since Romania is Moldova’s number one supporter in the country’s journey to the EU, the rise of a Eurosceptic (more correctly anti-EU ultranationalist) candidate to power would be a problem. Furthermore, Romania’s far right has very aggressive rhetoric about re-uniting historical Romanian lands - especially Moldova. This is *the nightmare* scenario for people in Gagauzia and to a lesser extent Russian speakers in Moldova more broadly. Ultranationalist rhetoric coming out of Romania at the presidential level will pour gasoline on Moldova’s inter-ethnic divides.

Until now Romania has been seen as a reliable EU member and NATO ally. The country hosts the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base near Constanta which is currently being upgraded by the alliance and is planned to be the largest NATO air base in Europe. The county has been a major supporter of Ukrainian refugees and a significant, if quiet, supporter of Ukraine’s armed forces.

A win for Călin Georgescu in the second round of the vote will have massive geopolitical consequences and bilateral consequences for Moldova.

What’s Next?

Back on October 21st Moldova reeled from the shockingly narrow passage of the referendum and girded itself for a rapid 2-week runoff campaign. Romania has even less time than that. Next Sunday the country will hold parliamentary elections which will be followed by the presidential runoff a week later. Romanians will go to the polls 3 weeks in a row and decide the future of their nation.

The AUR party has already put its support behind Mr. Georgescu and the next big question is whether his strong showing will result in a major boost to AUR, Eurosceptics and ultranationalists in the parliamentary elections.

In the presidential runoff center right and left parties are busy aligning behind Elena Lasconi in order to ward off catastrophe. Lasconi herself called for unity, said that she will represent all voters and asked for the support of voters who supported other candidates in the first round. She has outlined the stakes saying:

"We are all aware that we are facing a danger that few of us thought possible. Let us be very clear, Călin Georgescu is an open admirer of Putin, he is open against NATO and the EU, he has a fascist, Ceausist⁵ speech. He wants to destroy everything on which all our prosperity rests. Without NATO we are at the mercy of Russia"

In Moldova the PAS Party called on Moldovan dual citizens to support Lasconi in the second round. Party Leader and Speaker of Parliament Igor Grosu called on dual citizens to vote saying:

"We must protect Romania and Moldova from extremists and politicians with neo-fascist views who admire dictators. The second round of the presidential elections in Romania will decide the fate of not only Romania, but also Moldova. A prosperous Romania, which is part of the EU and NATO, is absolutely necessary for Moldova's European development," 

The Warnings Keep Coming

The results of the election in Romania has surprised and shocked Western European capitals. It shouldn’t have. Voices from Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and what remains of free Belarus in exile have been shouting, screaming and warnings for years. They have consistently said “Putin tests his strategy and tactics in our countries and then deploys them in yours.” These warnings have continued to fall on deaf ears as Europe focuses on bureaucratic infighting and creates yet another working group to discuss the problem. Western media outlets keep writing about “alleged” Russian interference in Georgia and Moldova.

After Moldova’s elections so-called Moldova experts, many of whom are exiled anti-Putin Russians with no background in Moldova, questioned the real reasons for the outcomes. We heard all about anti-incumbency sentiments and about how inflation and economic factors *really* undermined Maia Sandu. There is no doubt that these issues were on voters minds, just like in Romania. There is no doubt that anti-incumbent sentiment hurt Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. But there is also no doubt that this is not the main story.

Călin Georgescu’s appearance out of nowhere is another warning. The coordinated online campaigns on social media are warnings. The fact that a man came in first in a presidential race with zero campaign spending is a WARNING.

Is anyone listening?

1. If workmen quote a week’s worth of work sometime’s you gotta bet on things taking a lot longer. If you ever been here, you know what a mess that can be.

2. Ion Antonescu was the fascist dictator of Romania during WW2. He was responsible for the Holocaust in Romania (and Moldova) and was later executed for war crimes.

3. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was the leader of the “Iron Guard” paramilitary political movement. He espoused a mystical version of Fascism generally recognized to have uniquely religious aspects when compared to other European fascist movements. His movement espoused a “cult of death” and was ultranationalist and vehemently anti-semitic. He was killed extrajudicially by the police prior to the war during monarchist attempts to suppress the rising tide of extremism. Antonescu and the fascist movement later honored him as something of a far-right saint.

4. It’s worth noting that in all the post-Soviet revolutions Nicolae Ceaușescu is the only leader to be put against a wall by his former people and shot. To say that there was an external conspiracy forced Romanians to hate the man who pursued megalomaniacal, grandiose, construction projects while exporting enough food to bring starvation and privation is ludicrous.

5. Referring to the late dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.