Romania’s elites have declared war on democracy

European elites are currently in shock trying to process last month’s surprise victory of Calin Georgescu, a nationalist, Russian-sympathising outsider, in the first round of Romania’s presidential election.

The first-round results were a complete humiliation for Romania’s established parties. In fact, candidates for the two centrist parties in the current governing coalition both failed even to make it to the second round – one of them was current prime minister Marcel Ciolacu, who resigned as leader of the Social Democratic Party in the wake of the results. Instead, another relative outsider, Elena Lasconi, made it through to the 8 December run-off.

Georgescu’s rise seemed to come out of nowhere. He didn’t feature in the TV debates, had virtually no presence in opinion polls and was not even aligned with any political party. Instead, he campaigned almost solely on TikTok, where videos of him doing judo, riding horses and swimming in rivers have helped him cultivate a strongman image. There he also delights in attacking the sacred cows of Romania’s pro-Western and pro-EU elites. Notoriously, he claimed that NATO would never defend Romania from attack. Even more shockingly, he once argued that Vladimir Putin deserves praise for his uncompromising defence of Russian interests. Such sympathies for Putin are troubling and perplexing, given Russia’s revanchist ambitions in Eastern Europe.

A friend of Trump-appointee Robert F Kennedy Jr, Georgescu shares many of RFK’s crankish and conspiratorial beliefs. To call him a vaccine sceptic would be putting it lightly. He recently stated that Covid-19 doesn’t even exist because ‘no one had actually seen the virus’.

Yet whatever one thinks of Georgescu’s oddball views, the response of the Romanian and EU elites to his success has been infinitely more alarming. Within days, Russian interference and TikTok were blamed. Romania’s telecoms regulator called for TikTok to be banned, while the Supreme Council of Defence announced an investigation into ‘cyber actors’ in the election. Not to be outdone, pearl-clutchers at the European Parliament attempted to summon the chief executive of TikTok to ‘ensure his platform conducted to no infringement’ under the EU’s anti-free-speech law, the Digital Services Act.

Blaming Russian conspiracies or social media for elections going the ‘wrong’ way is, of course, nothing new for European elites. In the wake of the Brexit vote, Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Russian bots were accused of brainwashing the public. More recently, Brussels blamed social media for the success of right-wing populist parties in this summer’s European Parliament elections. Indeed, insulating voters from populist talking points, under the guise of tackling ‘disinformation’ and ‘hate speech’, has become a key part of the EU’s raison d’etre.

European elites clearly think the purpose of elections is to rubber stamp their own candidates and policies, not to offer voters a free choice. Whenever their preferred candidates are rejected, instead of reflecting on the reasons for the public’s discontent, they respond by discrediting the electoral process or blaming external forces.

Yet even by the usual standards, the reaction to Georgescu’s first-round win has been remarkable.

As well as demanding the banning of TikTok, Romanian elites have also turned to the courts to try to undo the election. The scandal-prone Supreme Court has ordered a recount of votes – the first time this has been done in Romania’s post-Communist history. Commentators suggest that the governing coalition is hoping to place its candidate back into the second run-off.

Worse still, the Supreme Court is also due to consider annulling the election entirely, though the decision has been deferred. That this can even be contemplated is scandalous.

The arrogant dismissal of Georgescu’s success as a product merely of election hacking demonstrates the degree to which Romania’s rulers have become cut off from the concerns of ordinary voters. Georgescu, before his shock win, was known mostly for his advocacy for rural and agricultural communities. This clearly resonated with ordinary Romanians more than the messages and policies of the centrist parties – enough, it seems, for many voters to overlook his more outlandish beliefs.

Concerns about the war in Ukraine clearly played a role, too. Romanian political elites seem to have taken public sympathy for Ukraine’s plight for granted and have failed to stand up robustly for Ukrainians’ freedoms. The longer the war goes on, the more questions have been asked about its implications for Romania’s security and the dangers posed by escalation. The temptation to dismiss anyone sharing such concerns as simply ‘Russian sympathisers’ has clearly pushed many towards Georgescu (even if he himself clearly deserves that label).

Undoubtedly, the Romanian elites will now pull out all the stops to avoid Georgescu winning the presidential run-off. But even if they succeed in defeating him, the broad discontent which produced him will not go away. Whatever happens next, their anti-democratic machinations have made it abundantly clear why they are so distrusted by the voters.

Jacob Reynolds is head of policy at MCC Brussels.