New presidential elections in Romania scheduled for May.
After the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of presidential elections shortly before the runoff, the date for a new presidential election has now been set.
from Anti-Spiegel January 9, 2025 6:00 am
It was a rare impressive presentation of “Western democracy” when no explicitly US, NATO and EU-friendly candidate made it to the runoff in the first round of the presidential elections in Romania in November, because that was canceled just two days before the planned runoff Romania's Constitutional Court quickly announced the election results after the USA and the EU protested and spoke of Russian election interference on TikTok. The Romanian Constitutional Court obediently invoked this, but without providing any evidence of the alleged election interference.
Interestingly, even the FAZ reported on December 19th that there was no evidence of alleged election interference by Russia. The article said:
“Even if experts consider Russian authorship of the expensive campaign on social media such as Tiktok to be plausible: Since the Constitutional Court's decision two weeks ago, Bucharest has not yet provided any explanation as to who is behind the foreign interference. Now Johannis explained during a press conference on Wednesday evening in Brussels that at the diplomatic level it was “extremely complicated to point the finger and say: it was you.”
On December 20, an investigative Romanian portal reported that there had apparently actually been an election influence by a TikTok campaign. However, this was not financed by Russia, but ironically by the EU-friendly liberal-conservative party PNL, which is part of the EPP bloc in the EU Parliament. Apparently there was some trickery involved, as the winner of the first round of elections, Georgescu, benefited from the campaign.
And according to the report, this is how it happened: Accordingly, the campaign was actually intended to lure voters from the social democratic party PSD to the PNL. However, when George Simion from the nationalist party Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor (AUR) became dangerous to the PNL during the election campaign, Georgescu, who was also described as nationalist, was also supposed to be promoted – allegedly on the advice of the president – in order to weaken Simion.
Why the Romanian presidential elections are so important.
The reason for the panic in the West after the first round of elections in November was the powers of the Romanian president, because in Romania the government is led by the prime minister, but the president has some important powers. For example, the president has control over defense spending, which is currently the most important thing for the US government and the EU leadership in view of NATO's demands for even higher arms spending and the EU's demands to support Ukraine on its own if necessary after Trump's election victory topic is.
Romania is also strategically very important for the USA because the country shares a border with Ukraine and Moldova. Romania is also a country with important naval ports for NATO on the Black Sea and the largest NATO base in Eastern Europe is currently being built in Romania. And, very importantly, part of the so-called US missile defense in Europe is in Romania.
After the first round of voting, Prime Minister Ciolacu, the only politician who was clearly pro-USA, pro-EU and pro-NATO, was thrown out of the presidential election and the runoff election included a candidate whose positions are not completely clear and a candidate who is clear against supporting Ukraine and to protect Romanian interests.
No matter which of the two would have won the runoff, at these crucial times for Washington and Brussels there was a risk that Romania could become an uncertain candidate in the fight against Russia.
So something had to be done and that's why Washington and Brussels built up gigantic pressure in the days that followed, whereupon the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the election results.
This is how western democracy works and we can be excited to see what we will have to offer in the new presidential elections.