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This is from Friday, but the story didn’t really progress over the weekend.
CNN:
Romania’s constitutional court has annulled the first round of the country’s 2024 presidential election process, which was narrowly won by far-right ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu amid allegations of Russian interference.
The historic decision means a second-round runoff that was scheduled for Sunday, when Georgescu would have gone head to head with his centrist rival Elena Lasconi, will no longer take place.
In a press release, the court said the annulment was based on Article 146(f) of the Constitution, emphasizing the need to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process.
The court’s decision, announced Friday, is final and binding. It requires the Romanian government to restart the electoral calendar.
Friday’s decision caps off a troubled election cycle in the country, with the same court last week ordering a recount of the first-round votes.
It also comes just days after the vote was hit with fears over foreign interference, after declassified documents from Romania’s top security council revealed evidence of “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks.”
They also showed how Georgescu was boosted by potential interference on TikTok – the social media platform on which he largely ran his campaign – through algorithms, coordinated accounts and paid promotion, Reuters reported.
One of the declassified documents, from the Romanian intelligence agency, detailed more than 85,000 attempted cyber-attacks on election websites and IT systems, and concluded that “the attacker has considerable resources specific to an attacking state,” Reuters reported.
These findings prompted the US State Department to express concern on Wednesday and warn that a shift away from the West “would have serious negative impacts on U.S. security cooperation with Romania.”
Yeah.
You didn’t even need to include that paragraph, CNN.
I already knew that.
In a later statement Friday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said: “The United States reaffirms our confidence in Romania’s democratic institutions and processes, including investigations into foreign malign influence.”
Georgescu was gonna win by a large margin according to some polls
Georgescu, 62, started his campaign with single-digit support but enjoyed a shock rise to prominence, narrowly emerging as leader in the election’s first round with 22.9% of the vote to Lasconi’s 19.2%.
While he has not described himself as specifically pro-Russian, Georgescu had previously labeled Ukraine an “invented state” and declared he wants a strategy of “peace with everyone, regardless of who they are.”
…
The court’s decision to cancel the election came the day after a large protest in the Romanian capital Bucharest, when hundreds turned out to rally in favor of Lasconi and against the far right. A small group of counter-protesters also rallied in support of Georgescu on Thursday night.
Protesters held banners reading “Romania, a landmark in the EU and NATO” and “No fascism.”
“I’m here today to protest against this fascist movement that is coming here, to Romania, against this leader that they have, Calin Georgescu, who appeared out of nowhere, clearly sponsored by Putin and by Moscow and we’re fighting against all the things that went wrong during this campaign,” one demonstrator called Mihai told Reuters.
Another protester, a student named Daniel, pointed to “a lot of fraud, suspected fraud at the voting stations” in the first-round vote.
If I were to take guess, I’d say that protest was why the elections were canceled.
The NGOs tried to do a big event, brought in all sorts of celebrities, and in the end fewer than 5,000 people attended, which is a pathetic number to get in a country with roughly the same population as the state of New York.
Someone at the US embassy probably realized their agitation isn’t working and decided to just shut it down.
