Romania’s Rigged Election is just the Beginning

by Thomas Fazi

Image made using “Flag of NATO 4.4.2023 - 52792851125,” by Finnish Government licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic and “Storm Clouds,” by Jo Naylor licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic. All other images used are in the public domain.

For a brief 24-hour period in May, Romania—one of Europe’s poorest and most marginal countries—found itself thrust into the global spotlight as the results from the second round of its presidential election began to emerge. This attention stemmed from the view that the election—which pitted George Simion, the leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) against Bucharest’s pro-EU centrist mayor, Nicușor Dan—represented yet another battleground in the ongoing ideological and political clash often, if simplistically, framed in terms of nationalism versus globalism.

In the first round of the elections, Simion had won by a large margin, securing twice as many votes as Dan, and he seemed poised to safely win the run-off as well. Instead, in a surprising twist of events, Dan ended up securing a decisive 8-point victory over his right-wing rival. Establishment voices across Europe, and beyond, breathed a collective sigh of relief—and were quick to hail the result as a “victory for democracy.” This was a questionable assertion, considering how blatantly democratic principles were undermined throughout the entire electoral process.

Actually Existing Democratic Backsliding in Romania

Dan’s victory came in the wake of a series of events that have severely undermined Romania’s democratic credibility. Last November, the independent eurosceptic and NATO-critical candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round of the presidential election in a surprise result. However, before the runoff could take place, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the outcome, citing alleged but unproven Russian interference.

The intelligence dossier presented against Georgescu—“declassified” and published by Romanian then-president Klaus Iohannis two days before the ruling—provided no clear evidence of foreign interference or even electoral manipulation. It simply pointed to the existence of a media campaign supporting Georgescu that involved around 25,000 TikTok accounts coordinated through a Telegram channel, paid influencers and coordinated messaging. In other words, Romania’s top court annulled an entire election based on entirely unsubstantiated claims of foreign interference—a clear-cut case of institutional coup d’état.

This was the culmination of a weeks-long campaign aimed at delegitimizing Georgescu’s victory, which sent shockwaves through Romania’s ruling elite—and the Western establishment at large. This was the first time that the two parties that have come to dominate Romanian politics since the fall of the Soviet-backed regime in 1989—the Social Democratic Party and the center-right National Liberal Party, united in their commitment to the EU and NATO—both failed to make it past the first round of a presidential election.

Adding to the elites’ dismay was Georgescu’s status as a political outsider: Georgescu had consistently received negligible scores in polls throughout the campaign, had avoided televised debates and doesn’t even belong to a political party. Indeed, he had remained largely “invisible” in mainstream media coverage, relying mostly on social media to get his message out—first and foremost TikTok, which is very popular in Romania. His campaign’s grassroots strategy starkly contrasted with the traditional reliance on mainstream media and established political machinery.

The establishment’s response was swift and aggressive. The first step involved launching a media blitz—both in Romania and abroad—to discredit Georgescu, painting him as a “pro-Russian far-right ultranationalist” and all-round crackpot, and alleging Russian interference, which prepared the ground for the subsequent annulment of the election results. Meanwhile, Romanian prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against Georgescu on charges ranging from “incitement to actions against the constitutional order” to setting up an organization with “fascist, racist or xenophobic characteristics” to antisemitism—even though Georgescu’s campaign focused primarily on economic policy and Romania’s geopolitical orientation.

In short, when smear campaigns by the mainstream media and established political parties failed to stem Georgescu’s rising popularity, the Romanian state mobilized nearly every institution against him—the courts, the police and even the secret services. The objective was to eliminate Georgescu from the equation by any means necessary. Incredibly, a Romanian investigative outlet subsequently revealed that the TikTok campaign used to justify the cancellation of the election was actually paid for by the ruling National Liberal Party—the very party that supported cancelling the elections, and from which the country’s former president, who played a key role in the whole affair until his resignation earlier this year, originated.

Election Interference from the West

A new election date was set for May, but many questioned how the establishment could prevent a repeat of the November results—especially since the entire charade only strengthened support for Georgescu. The answer came in March, when the electoral commission disqualified Georgescu from running altogether. Particularly striking is the fact that the electoral commission’s ruling was based on the “foreign interference” allegations used by the constitutional court to annul the first round of the presidential election, even though these had been debunked. A lower appeals court temporarily reversed the decision, but the High Court of Cassation and Justice ultimately upheld it. At that point, Georgescu’s political fate was sealed.

There is ample reason to believe that this extraordinary turn of events was not solely driven by domestic factors. Given the country’s strategic role in NATO and the war against Russia, it is highly plausible that these actions were taken under pressure from—or in coordination with—Washington and Brussels. Romania has been instrumental in providing military aid to Ukraine. Additionally, it is at Romania’s 86th Air Base where Ukrainian pilots receive training on F-16 fighter jets. This facility serves as a regional hub for NATO allies and partners. Moreover, the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, on the Black Sea coast, is undergoing significant development to become the largest NATO base in Europe. This expansion aims to support NATO operations and strengthen the alliance’s presence in the Black Sea region and its control of Russia’s “near abroad.” It’s easy to see why the Euro-Atlantic establishment would have been deeply concerned by the prospect of Romania’s role as a NATO garrison coming under threat.

No wonder, then, that the Biden administration issued a statement expressing concern over Russian involvement in the election two days before the Romanian constitutional court annulled the election. Moreover, Romanian think tanks and NGOs that received funding through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the State Department played a key role in championing the judicial coup, as the investigative journalist Lee Fang revealed.

Some European governments likely also played a key role—most notably Emmanuel Macron’s administration in France. Last December, just hours before the constitutional court annulled the election, the pro-EU candidate running against Georgescu, Elena Lasconi, posted a conversation with Macron on her Facebook page in which the French president issued several thinly veiled threats about the grave consequences a Georgescu victory would have for Romania. Moreover, just a few days before the electoral commission’s ruling against Georgescu, the French ambassador paid a visit to the president of the Romanian constitutional court, in which the two reaffirmed the importance of resisting “the penetration of populism into the decisions or rulings of a constitutional court”—an apparent reference to the criticisms of the court’s decision to annul the election results. Telegram founder Pavel Durov later revealed that he was asked by the French intelligence chief’s request to ban conservative Romanian accounts.

In short, to the extent that there was a foreign hybrid attack against Romania, it wasn’t waged by Russia—but by the transatlantic establishment, through foreign pressure, fabricated intelligence reports, foreign-funded “civil-society organizations” and judicial subversion.

Faux Populism and Co-optation

Georgescu’s exclusion paved the way for the rise of George Simion, which had previously backed Georgescu and pledged not to run against him. He launched his campaign after Georgescu was barred, portraying himself as a defender of democracy and national sovereignty and even suggesting he would appoint Georgescu as prime minister if given the opportunity. As said, in the first round of the new elections, Simion won by a large margin. But why was Simion, unlike Georgescu, allowed to run in the first place? I believe the answer lies in the type of populism he represents. On the one hand, Simion holds much more radical positions than Georgescu on cultural and identity issues; on the other hand, however, he is significantly more aligned with establishment interests on crucial issues such as NATO, European integration and the war in Ukraine.

In this sense, Simion represents a new and increasingly common type of political actor: the faux-populist who combines strident cultural nationalism with loyalty to the economic and geopolitical status quo. This dual identity makes these characters ideal for co-option by the establishment in the latter’s attempt to respond to the populist backlash by promoting—or at least tolerating (even while publicly rebuking)—leaders who channel nationalist sentiments while leaving core power structures untouched.

In the end, however, this “plan B” turned out to be unnecessary, as the establishment’s preferred candidate, Dan, secured victory. Simon alleged that the Moldovan government was rallying the diaspora there against him and also claimed that other friendlier diasporas’ polling stations didn’t have enough ballots. He also said to have found millions deceased citizens in the electoral registries. Time will tell—perhaps—whether these allegations have any merit. But ultimately there seems to be little doubt that “it was the Romanians themselves who determined which of the candidates allowed on the ballot would prevail,” as Thomas Gallagher, professor of politics emeritus at the University of Bradford and author of several books on Romania, put it. “By a large margin, they concluded that in a fractured world that had brought war to Romania’s very doorstep, this was not a time for any leaps into the unknown.” Gallagher explained:

Fears that Simion would lead the country over a cliff started to surface. He made it easy by promising to slash jobs in the urban bureaucracy. A decisive moment was the four-hour televised debate with Dan on May 8. Simion was short-tempered and arrogant and struggled to think on his feet in the face of clever jabs from an unflustered opponent. He abruptly canceled the remaining televised debates, with Dan turning up and answering questions next to an empty chair. The rest of his time was spent traversing Europe, speaking to émigrés while seeming blasé about the economic condition of the country.

It may very well be that, from a strictly procedural standpoint, the voting process was flawless—and that voters freely chose continuity over uncertainty. But this doesn’t change the fact that election was “rigged” from the moment the November results were annulled and Georgescu was barred from running. After all, who’s to say that the outcome would have been the same if Georgescu had been on the ballot box instead of Simion, especially given the latter’s lackluster campaign? And this is not even considering the massive media and online campaign waged against Georgescu—and then Simion.

The West’s Return to Form: Repression and Elite Preservation

The events in Romania represent a new and fateful step for Western societies that claim to be liberal and democratic. Elites no longer limit themselves to influencing electoral outcomes through media manipulation, censorship, lawfare, economic pressure, and intelligence operations. When these fail to achieve the desired result, they are increasingly willing to discard the formal structures of democracy altogether, including elections.

The strategy is simple: keep rerunning or meddling in elections until the “correct” result is achieved—preferably by making sure that only candidates acceptable to the establishment appear on the ballot in the first place. By now, it should be evident to all that the Western electoral process has been reduced to little more than a mechanism for legitimizing oligarchic rule. Therefore, what transpired in Romania should be seen as a warning sign of what may soon unfold elsewhere.

It’s important to realize, however, that this anti-democratic drift has been a long time in the making. Indeed, one may argue that Western liberal-democratic states have been operating in a permanent state of exception for some time. The ease with which basic freedoms and constitutional guarantees were cast aside during the pandemic provided ample evidence of this. Ruling elites are able to do this because there is little in the way of organized mass resistance to challenge them.

For a brief thirty-year period following World War II, the masses succeeded in leveraging democratic institutions to wrest a measure of economic and political power from entrenched oligarchic elites, but the material conditions that made that possible—first and foremost the organized power of labor—no longer exist. In retrospect, the brief period of (relative) popular sovereignty was an exceptional, geographically limited deviation from the historical norm, sustained by unique material and political conditions. Indeed, countries like Romania never even experienced that, having gone straight from communist rule to neoliberal post-democracy. The two pillars of the transatlantic alliance—the European Union and NATO—have advanced Europe’s anti-democratic trends, leading the charge in undermining democratic processes and suppressing popular self-determination.

Thus, what we are witnessing is not the “degeneration” of Western liberal democracy, an unfortunate deviation from the historical norm, but rather its logical conclusion. States that were once briefly responsive to popular demands have now returned to the function state institutions have had throughout most of capitalism’s history: preserving elite power at all costs.

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For more from Thomas Fazi, visit his Substack.