Summary
Romania’s electoral commission barred far-right candidate Calin Georgescu from the presidential election without explanation.
Georgescu, who led polls with 40%, called the move “a direct blow to democracy” and plans to appeal. His supporters protested in Bucharest.
The constitutional court annulled his prior election win over alleged Russian interference, which he denies. He faces legal issues, including accusations of financing violations and extremist ties.
A vocal Trump supporter, Georgescu received backing from Trump officials, including Elon Musk and JD Vance, who condemned Romania’s actions.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this pretty much confirms that the leading parties have been colluding to manipulate elections. The ideal situation would have been him getting his ass whoopped by being voted out. On the other, there was a non-zero chance that he might actually have won.
Either way, the shitshow is not even close to being over. These parties make up 32% of our current parliament, and they’re likely to grow after this stunt, so we’ll have to deal with this crap again during the next election cycle, or sooner.
As a Romanian I’m on the same page as you. While I completely despise this guy for his ties to the fascist movement in Romania, his corrupted political allies, and his closeness to dictators like Trump and Putin, barring him from running for office is a big mistake if no concrete evidence against him is actually laid out. A democracy should be transparent. This entire ordeal wasn’t.
The guy said that if he becomes president, he’ll dismantle all political parties. In a democratic system you cannot let someone run for president if they openly vow to dismantle democracy itself.
If you allow foreign dictatorships to influence your democracy then are you really a democracy at all? Better to nip people like this in the bud.
Also the legal grounds for their removal was their ties to the Iron Guard, which is illegal.
Well, that’s the issue, those were not the legal grounds for his removal. Those would’ve been better than the current situation.
The electoral office basically barred him because of the previous decision made by the constitutional court to stop the election process because of his supposed ties to an unnamed, foreign government and discrepancies in his declarations regarding his funding (basically he claimed to have spent zero euros on his campaign even though it is proven that multiple millions have been spent to run his campaign for him).
In the meantime, we’ve only heard that he might have had connections to Russia and what not, but no concrete proof has been laid out. At all. Only rumors and information that slowly drips out from anonymous sources supposedly involved with the investigation.
Now don’t get me wrong, I hate the guy’s guts. I’m the complete opposite of what that man stands for. I’m a queer socialist. But at the same time I can recognise that our authorities kind of fucked up massively here. They need to be transparent. With the way they’re handling the situation right now they’re just turning this fascist into some sort of martyr.