Romania must start over; Constitutional Court annuls outcome of first round of presidential election

Brussels – A political earthquake in Romania: two days before the runoff, set for Dec. 8, the Constitutional Court unanimously annulled the entire electoral process that led to the first round of the presidential election two weeks ago. The judges ruled that the vote, from which the ultranationalist and pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu surprisingly emerged as the winner, was manipulated by interference from Moscow. Now, there has to be a clean slate as a political Pandora’s box opens in the Balkan country.

According to the results annulled today, Georgescu surprisingly outperformed the leaders of the two mainstream parties (PSD and NLP), advancing to the runoff – initially scheduled for the day after tomorrow – against liberal Elena Lasconi.

The first to report the news, in the early afternoon of today (Dec. 6), was the news site G4Media. According to rumors, the reason for the annulment lies in the documentation of Russian interference: “The annulment of the vote comes following the declassification of intelligence information indicating Russian interference in the elections,” the site reports.

The ruling, as dramatic as Georgescu’s victory (probably even more so), detonated like a bomb on the Romanian political process while electoral operations were already underway among diaspora communities in preparation for the runoff. In recent days, several requests to annul the November vote had been submitted to the court, mostly citing alleged—and now, it seems, confirmed—manipulation of the results by Russian agents.
In recent weeks, TikTok had also come under fire between Bucharest and Brussels, as it had been the principal platform on which Georgescu ran his electoral campaign. The social network had been accused of failing to deploy adequate tools to limit malicious interference in the electoral process of the Balkan country.