{"id":407728,"date":"2024-11-25T13:23:46","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T12:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/11\/25\/presidenziali-romania-primo-turno\/"},"modified":"2024-11-28T17:22:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T16:22:21","slug":"romania-presidential-election-pro-russian-georgescu-surprisingly-ahead-for-runoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/11\/25\/romania-presidential-election-pro-russian-georgescu-surprisingly-ahead-for-runoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania presidential election: pro-Russian Georgescu surprisingly ahead for runoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – The populist and pro-Russian candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu<\/strong>\u00a0somewhat unexpectedly came first In the presidential elections in Romania<\/strong>, overtaking incumbent social democratic premier\u00a0Ion-Marcel Ciolacu<\/strong> and liberal challenger Elena-Valerica Lasconi<\/strong>, who are in a head-to-head contest for second place. But since no one won an absolute majority of preferences, it will go to a run-off vote\u00a0in early December<\/strong>, a week after the legislative elections to renew Parliament.<\/p>\n

The voting numbers<\/h3>\n

With just over 52 percent turnout (about 9.4 million voters), the first round of the Romanian presidential elections on\u00a0Sunday (Nov. 24) saw the populist candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu<\/strong> surprisingly come out on top, taking home 22.95 percent of the vote<\/strong> (over 2.1 million preferences) according to data<\/a> provided by the Permanent Election Committee in Bucharest, with\u00a099.98 percent of the votes counted<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

After him were the\u00a0Liberal candidate Elena-Valerica Lasconi<\/strong> (19.17 percent<\/strong> and more than 1.7 million votes) and incumbent Prime Minister Ion-Marcel Ciolacu<\/strong> (with 19.15 percent<\/strong> and about 2,000 votes less than Lasconi). Given the marginal gap, the two are playing for second place and, consequently, for a spot in the run-off<\/strong>. George-Nicolae Simion<\/strong>, leader of AUR<\/strong>, another pro-Russian and populist radical-right party, came in fourth.<\/p>\n

It is an unexpected result<\/strong> given that all the polls on the eve of the vote\u00a0gave the pro-European premier Ciolacu – a member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD)<\/strong> that has ruled the country since 2021 – as the favorite and Simion as the likely challenger in the run-off. Now, Georgescu will face either\u00a0Ciolacu or\u00a0Lasconi (leader of the liberal USR party) in the second round set for Dec. 8<\/strong>. The run-off will come exactly one week after the parliamentary elections<\/strong>, scheduled for Dec. 1, in which Romanians will be called upon to renew the Bucharest Parliament.<\/p>\n

Who is Georgescu<\/h3>\n

Georgescu, 62, is running as an independent, but this is not his first time on the Romanian political scene.\u00a0Holding a doctorate in soil science (which qualified him for university teaching) and having had a career as a consultant, he held several positions in the Ministry of Environment<\/strong> in the 1990s before representing Bucharest in the UN’s Environmental Program (UNEP)<\/strong> between 1999 and 2012.<\/p>\n

Until 2022,\u00a0he was also a member of AUR<\/strong>, the nationalist, populist, and pro-Russian party co-founded by Simion (who continues to advocate Romania’s unification with Moldova), until being expelled for publicly expressing sympathy for Ion Antonescu,<\/strong> the dictator and collaborationist of the Third Reich,<\/i><\/strong> who held the Balkan country in his grip between 1940 and 1944, which is why the Romanian prosecutor general accused the 62-year-old of promoting<\/strong> “people responsible for genocide.”<\/p>\n

Georgescu has been campaigning on TikTok<\/strong>, questioning\u00a0support for Ukraine<\/strong> and Bucharest’s membership in NATO<\/strong>. In an interview a couple of years ago, he referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/strong>\u00a0as one of the few “real leaders” in the world. He has also said he admires\u00a0the “negotiating” skills of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The presidential term<\/strong> in Romania lasts five years and is renewable only once.\u00a0Therefore, incumbent President Klaus Iohannis<\/strong> (elected in 2014 and confirmed in 2019) must\u00a0step aside. The\u00a0head of state’s\u00a0most important powers include\u00a0national security<\/strong>, foreign policy<\/strong>, and appointments within the\u00a0judiciary branch\u200b.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Against all odds, the first round of the elections for the head of state saw populist independent C\u0103lin Georgescu overtake Prime Minister Ion-Marcel Ciolacu, who finished even in third place (albeit by a narrow margin). The second round in two weeks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":407739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[28130,28131,29785,28241,29786],"class_list":["post-407728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-calin-georgescu-en","tag-klaus-iohannis-en","tag-marcel-ciolacu-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407728"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407748,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407728\/revisions\/407748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}