{"id":411931,"date":"2024-12-06T15:06:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T14:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/12\/06\/presidenziali-romania-corte-annulla-voto\/"},"modified":"2024-12-12T17:23:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T16:23:00","slug":"romania-must-start-over-constitutional-court-annuls-outcome-of-first-round-of-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/12\/06\/romania-must-start-over-constitutional-court-annuls-outcome-of-first-round-of-presidential-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania must start over; Constitutional Court annuls outcome of first round of presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Brussels &#8211; A political earthquake in Romania: two days before the runoff, set for Dec. 8, <strong>the<\/strong> <strong>Constitutional Court unanimously annulled the entire electoral process that led to the\u00a0first round of the presidential<\/strong> election two weeks ago. The judges\u00a0ruled that the vote, from which\u00a0the ultranationalist and pro-Russian candidate <strong>C\u0103lin Georgescu <\/strong>surprisingly<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/11\/25\/romania-presidential-election-pro-russian-georgescu-surprisingly-ahead-for-runoff\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">emerged as the winner<\/a>, was <strong>manipulated by interference from Moscow<\/strong>.\u00a0Now, there has to be a clean slate as a political Pandora&#8217;s box opens in the Balkan country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">According to the results annulled\u00a0today,\u00a0<strong>Georgescu<\/strong> surprisingly outperformed\u00a0the leaders of the two mainstream parties (PSD and NLP),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/11\/26\/romania-presidential-election-georgescu-to-face-lasconi-in-the-runoff\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">advancing to the runoff<\/a> &#8211; initially scheduled for the day after tomorrow &#8211; against liberal <strong>Elena Lasconi<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The first to report the news, in the early afternoon of today (Dec. 6), was the news site <a href=\"https:\/\/www.g4media.ro\/surse-curtea-constitutionala-a-anulat-turul-1-al-alegerilor-prezidentiale.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">G4Media<\/a>. According to rumors, the reason for the annulment lies in the\u00a0<strong>documentation of Russian interference:<\/strong> &#8220;The annulment of the vote\u00a0comes following <strong>the declassification of intelligence information indicating Russian interference in the elections<\/strong>,&#8221; the site reports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The ruling, as dramatic as Georgescu&#8217;s victory (probably even more so), <strong>detonated like a bomb on the Romanian political process<\/strong> while electoral operations were already underway among diaspora communities in preparation for the runoff. In recent days,<strong> several requests to annul <\/strong>the November vote had been submitted to the court, mostly\u00a0citing alleged\u2014and now, it seems, confirmed\u2014<strong>manipulation of the results by Russian agents.<\/strong><br \/>\nIn recent weeks, <strong>TikTok had also come under fire <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/12\/05\/russian-interference-in-romanian-elections-european-commission-increases-scrutiny-of-tiktok\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">between Bucharest and Brussels<\/a>, as it had been the principal\u00a0platform on which Georgescu ran his electoral campaign. The social network had been accused of<strong> failing to deploy adequate tools to limit malicious interference<\/strong> in the electoral process of the Balkan country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bucharest judges annulled the victory of C\u0103lin Georgescu, an independent far-right candidate who had surprised everyone in the first round, due to alleged Russian interference. Now, the process must start over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":411898,"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":[29945,29785,29944,29805,29946,29943],"class_list":["post-411931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-calin-georgescu-en","tag-consitutional-court","tag-elena-lasconi-en","tag-presidential-elections-en","tag-presidential-romania-2024-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411931","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=411931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411981,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411931\/revisions\/411981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}