Romania's Political Crisis Evolves
December 9, 2024
Once again the Romanian elections have been a major driver of news in Moldova. We are going to get caught up on the events of the last week regarding these elections and their relation to Moldova. Tomorrow we’ll have an article rounding up the other stories of the past week.
Romania’s Constitutional Court Cancels the Presidential Elections
Friday afternoon the court announced it was canceling the second round presidential elections by unanimous decision. The elections will be restarted “from scratch” meaning that candidates will have to redeclare, register and basically that the whole process will be started over. The second round of the presidential election was scheduled to be held on Sunday December 8th, but Romanian election law gives voters in the diaspora 3 days of voting, meaning that by the time the election was canceled votes were already being cast. More than 48,000 diaspora voters had gone to the polls, the majority of them being in Moldova (8500+).
While the court did not give any specific reason for the move, its decision closely followed outgoing President Iohannis’ decision to declassify multiple security service analyses related to election interference (more on that below).
Far right candidate Calin Georgescu said that “Romanian state has trampled on democracy. We are talking about a sham.” and that “the corrupt system in Romania made a pact with the devil.”
His opponent Elena Lasconi agreed also saying that “Today is the moment when the Romanian state has trampled on democracy” and that the decision is “leading the country into anarchy.” She called on the authorities not to ignore the will of the voters.
The one country to quickly express solidarity with Romania was Ukraine, whose Foreign Ministry called out "Russia's unprecedented hybrid attack against Romanian democracy" saying that:
"This is yet another episode in Russia's broader hybrid aggression against Europe and the rest of the free world, which has recently manifested itself through Russia's active efforts to undermine the situation in Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and other countries,"
The cancelation of the elections caused shock both in and outside of Romania. The following headlines do a good job of highlighting the unprecedented nature of last Friday’s events:
Politico: Romanian election: What the hell is going on? (Dec 6)
Euractiv: Confidence in Romania’s democratic process hangs by a thread (Dec 7)
The Run Up to Cancelation
In the week leading up to the shock cancelation, multiple stories played out in parallel as Romania tried to come to terms with the shocking events of the last few weeks. On one hand, the campaign continued, with candidates making appearances, gaining endorsements and pollsters trying desperately to catch up after their first round miss. Multiple polls came out in the final week showing mixed results but seeming to indicate a relatively close race with Georgescu in the lead.
On December 5th President Maia Sandu traveled to Bucharest to endorse Elena Lasconi in person. She said that Lasconi “will not give up relations with Moldova” and that “Our common destiny is a free world, prosperity, stability and development that membership in the European Union brings.” She went on:
"The most dangerous thing for a nation is when it is overwhelmed by fear and hostility. I understand that many of us are worried and are looking for a leader with character who can unite us. I believe that Mrs. Lasconi can be that brave leader who loves Romanians and can unite us so that Romania stays on the right path,"
Government spokesman Daniel Voda also called on all dual Moldovan-Romanian citizens to vote for Lasconi to support peace, freedom and a pro-European and transatlantic future.
It is worth pointing out the surreal turn of events where, in the ending days of the campaign Elena Lasconi rolls out a major endorsement from Moldovan President Maia Sandu. At the same time, Calin Georgescu and his “team” continued to fuel rumors about some kind of interview or debate from Donald Trump’s team - though this never happened. A spokesman for RFK Jr. has now called the whole announcement of his visit “fake news” and Romania has been left to wonder what to make of the followup announcement of a visit by Brad Parscale which also never materialized.1
Declassifications and Investigations
On December 5th Romanian President Iohannis declassified a series of documents compiled by the intelligence services purporting to show that Georgescu benefited from a coordinated campaign by a “state actor.” While the report did not specifically name Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken supported the finding calling out Russian election interference in Romania in comments following the release of the documents.
The released documents and followup reporting have focused on coordinated campaigns on TikTok which saw massive upticks in traffic about Calin Georgescu in the final week of the campaign.
Much of the information focuses on a man named Bogdan Peşchir (username: bogpr) who allegedly spent 1 million euros promoting Calin Georgescu on Tiktok. The mechanism was a popular feature of Tiktok where people can change fiat currencies into a Tiktok “coin” which can be used to pay popular creators during live streams. In Romania it is common for influencers to hold dueling streams to see who can out-raise the other person. Tiktok has confirmed that Peşchir spent $381,000 in one month donating to accounts that promoted Georgescu.
In some cases influencers were approached by email and offered money from a South African company to make videos promoting Georgescu.
Police have now opened criminal cases into illicit campaign financing and cybercrimes related to the Georgescu campaign. In multiple raids on properties affiliated with Peşchir they seized $7 million dollars in funds that they claim originated with criminal activity.
An investigation by Bloomberg indicated that Facebook was also happy to accept outside funding in promotion of Georgescu. They tracked 25 separate pages that spent over $279,000 on political advertisements in the lead up to elections. These pages were all purporting to be news or entertainment pages but showed indications of coordination including common IP addresses, identical registered email accounts and a total lack of transparency information. These pages promoted Georgescu and called Lasconi a “devil” and a “puppet” of the west.
Facebook’s Nick Clegg stated that “We see no evidence of any major incidents on our platforms in Romania.”
New Information on Georgescu’s Far Right Links
Investigative outlet RISE Romania reported that in spite of his modest personal means and zero campaign infrastructure Calin Georgescu travels with a formidable team of bodyguards at all times. The leader of this group, Marin Burcea, is a former sniper and special operations corporal with the French Foreign Legion. He has previously supported another Georgescu supporter, Eugen Sechila, in running paramilitary camps which spread legionary propaganda including promoting the leadership qualities of Hitler and Mussolini.
On December 8th police stopped cars transporting 20 men to Bucharest with pistols, knives, batons, ax handles, helmets and other small weapons. The men were led by another Georgescu supporter and former French Foreign Legion member named Horațiu Potra. German reporters had previously linked Potra and a mercenary group he served with to activities in the Congo alongside Wagner Mercenaries. Police stated that they believed the men were headed to the capital to create scenes of public disorder.
Reporters from ZdG also found that Georgescu had previously written positively about Ilan Shor. In his 2022 book "The Great Renaissance. Truth. Freedom. Sovereignty. Exiting the Matrix" Georgescu dedicates a chapter to profiling figures he considers important and writes about Shor saying that he “has some interesting ideas.” He does note accusations of corruption against Shor but quotes Shor’s father saying that Ilan would not resort to "deception, dishonor, indifference towards people."
Aftermath of the Cancelation
On Sunday December 8th Calin Georgescu went to what would have been his polling place as a protest. He made statements to the media saying:
"Today is Constitution Day, and there is nothing constitutional in Romania anymore. I am here in the name of democracy. I am not calling on anyone to do anything, it is simply a moment of silence. Today was supposed to be the second round, it was canceled, and by canceling the vote, our democracy is canceled,"
The candidate called for calm and asked for no incitements to violence. He expressed hope that the second round would be rescheduled soon saying that he does not believe that a total re-do of the election would occur.
That is not what the ruling of the Constitutional Court says and it is not clear where he is finding this “optimism.”
President Iohannis outlined to the press what will happen next in this “unprecedented” situation. He explained that the first step will be for the newly elected parliament to form a government and then for that government to set a date for new elections. The current President stated that he will remain in office until a successor is chosen.
What Happened and What’s Next?
Romania’s in for a bumpy road ahead. While the Constitutional Court is widely understood to have canceled the election due to Russian interference, many Romanians believe that a second, ulterior motive also exists. Voters largely feel that the traditional PSD and PNL parties are corrupt and have entrenched themselves in the institutions - including the courts. This has led to suspicions that a “redo” of the elections will allow candidates from the incumbent parties to have another shot at the presidency. Whether this is true or not, widespread anti-incumbent sentiment2 clearly helped support Georgescu and other outsider candidates like Elena Lasconi.
Now, Lasconi’s party USR will be forced to make a coalition deal in parliament with these traditional incumbent parties in order to form a government that keeps the far-right out of power. This may hurt her candidacy going into a second round.
Criminal investigations against Mr. Georgescu are just starting but given the existing evidence of widespread campaign spending, and his lack of a campaign at all, it seems very possible that he will be barred from future elections (or even arrested). This could add a bit more fuel to an already volatile mix.
In the short term the situation in Romania may stabilize somewhat. Because President Iohannis will stay in office while the new government is formed he will be responsible for promoting a prime minister and playing the president’s role in government formation. If Georgescu had won last Sunday it is likely that this process would have become much more difficult.
In the medium term Romania appears to have entered a majorly unstable period - and a situation that could increasingly benefit the far right if people feel that corrupt politicians have been maneuvering to deny them the vote.
The endorsement of Maia Sandu and calls to the polls from PAS party members indicate that Moldova considers these elections to be very important to the country’s national interest and security.3 Romania entering into a prolonged period of internal squabbling and political instability represents a major challenge to Moldova as the country enters another winter energy crisis.
Looking forward, the EU has seemingly begun to take a warning from the new forms of interference on their eastern flank. The European Commission issued a “retention order” to Tiktok last week compelling the company to preserve any documents and information related to political spending on the platform within the block. This order governs information between 24 November 2024 and 31 March 2025 - dates that were presumably selected to include the expected February German Elections.
Some Romanian journalists have begun trying to better understand what links exist between Brad Parscale and the Romanian far-right. Trump’s first term in office showed how hard it sometimes is to separate administration policy from the personal errands and ambitious of people linked to him. As loath as I am to write anything about Trump we’ll have to come back to this in a future article looking at how the incoming administration might impact Moldova.
Anti-incumbent sentiments have been a global feature of elections in 2024. Just as with the Moldovan election it is really difficult to parse out how much of Georgescu’s (and other far right politicians’) support was driven by anger at the incumbents and how much was driven by mass propaganda campaigns. These questions are intertwined because the Russian mechanism has long been to target their propaganda at areas of existing division. So far Romania has shown evidence of a massive online campaign and a fairly negligibly amount of illicit financing. 1 million euros in a country the size of Romania hardly compares to the estimates that Russia spent around 100 million euros on Moldova’s elections.
This could indicate a few things. On one hand, it is possible that support for far-right candidates in Romania was already large and only a small amount of spending was required to kickstart a mass movement.
Another option is that Moldova has a relatively hardened information space. Police, security services, journalists and civil society groups have spent the last 3 years combatting disinformation, infiltration, illicit financing and other Russian hybrid warfare tactics. Even with that Moldova was still very nearly overwhelmed in these elections. It is possible that Romania was a soft target because they did not prepare - President Iohannis has in fact clearly said that they had no indications that such an attack was coming. This may indicate that further investigations will turn up much more spending and propaganda.
Most frighteningly, it suggests that even countries extremely close to Russian attacks are not learning from them and preparing their information space. If Romania was not watching and learning from Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, is Germany?
It’s worth nothing that in addition to worrying about Moldovan national interest, all the Moldovan politicians making endorsements in the Romanian elections are themselves Romanians. This is why they are allowed to make such statements (while RFK Jr. is not). It may seem odd for many outsiders to understand this dynamic but in Moldova it is very possible, and indeed common, to be both a proud Moldovan and a proud Romanian.
I’d be interested in a deep dive of campaign funding on both sides. The article focuses on the right, I don’t seem to get much understanding of the tactics and financing of the left, which I assume is also just as murky and strategic. To a bystander with no interest in the outcome, the unusual cancellation looks even murkier than the rights finances?