Court Cancels Election [semi-satire]

Semi-News/Semi-Satire ^ | 8 December 2024 | John Semmens

[John Semmens]

Citing "evidence" provided by the Romanian Intelligence Service alleging that Russian participation in a social media campaign may have unduly influenced voters, Romania's Constitutional Court annulled the first round results in which Calin Georgescu (Independent) finished first (22.9%) and Elena Lasconi (Save Romania Union) second (19.17%). This effectively cancels the top-two runoff leaving it up to Parliament and the Prime Minister to reschedule a new round one election.

Lasconi opposed the court's action, saying "the Romanian state trampled over democracy" and predicted that "God, the Romanian people, the truth and the law will prevail."

Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party leader George Simion called the court decision a "coup d'état in full swing."

Incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu (Social Democratic Party), third-place finisher (19.15%) in the first round of voting for president, praised the ruling, saying "the decision to cancel the presidential elections is the only correct solution. Every runoff in the last 30 years has included a representative from the SDP." He went on to call "Georgescu a previously politically unknown candidate with dangerous views. He opposes the war in Ukraine, is against extending NATO further east, endorses Christian values, and wants national sovereignty."

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken expressed admiration for "the Romanian Court's decision to save the country's democracy from the potential election of a Donald Trump clone. We were denied this same kind of rescue when Sen. McConnell blocked the appointment of Merrick Garland to the US Supreme Court in 2016 and when Sen. Manchin (D) and Sen. Sinema (I) rejected President Biden's proposal to appoint more Supreme Court justices in 2018. Now, Romania will have another chance to elect a responsible government while we are doomed to suffer under the dictatorship of Donald Trump for the next four years."

[Steven Scharf]

This is the first article that clearly explains the election in Romania. Other articles I have seen did not tell us that the incumbent came in 3rd, nor did they identify Calin Georgescu as an unknown.

Călin Georgescu Independent 2,120,401 22.94
Elena Lasconi Save Romania Union 1,772,500 19.18
Marcel Ciolacu Social Democratic Party 1,769,760 19.15
George Simion Alliance for the Union of Romanians 1,281,325 13.86

There were 14 total candidates so a majority was unlikely, but the incumbent could not even get to 20%. 80% of the voters wanted someone else. 52.% of the registered voters voted (the number of registered voters (18,008,480) appears to be high as the total population is 19,064,409.

I think the main issue is that a supposedly unknown won. But was he really unknown?

The debates started on 28 October 2024, three days after the start of the campaign. The last first round debate was broadcast on 21 November 2024, 8:30 hours before the electoral campaign ended. There had been 38 broadcast debates: 30 televised, six on the radio and three online.

38 debates in 24 days. Georgescu participated in 14 of the debates, Lasconi 2 debates and Ciolacu 0 debates. One would think he might like to get his message out to the voters.

Călin Georgescu (Romanian pronunciation: [kəˈlin dʒe̯orˈdʒesku]; born 26 March 1962) is a Romanian far-right politician, agronomist, and prominent conspiracy theorist, who worked in the field of sustainable development. Georgescu was appointed the executive director of the United Nations (UN) Global Sustainable Index Institute in Geneva and Vaduz for the period 2015–2016. Prior to that, he served as President of the European Research Centre for the Club of Rome (2013–2015). Georgescu is running as an independent candidate in the 2024 Romanian presidential election; his views have been described as pro-Russian, anti-NATO, and far-right, and he has been described as an ultranationalist, far-right populist, and extremist.

Elena Valerica Lasconi (Romanian pronunciation: [eˈlena lasˈkoni]; born 20 April 1972) is a Romanian politician and former journalist. She is serving as the mayor of Câmpulung in Argeș County, having been elected in both the 2020 and 2024 elections. On 26 June 2024, she won the internal elections in the Save Romania Union (USR), becoming its president. USR elected her in a landslide as the party’s frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election. Lasconi briefly led the list of USR candidates for the 2024 European Parliament elections, a position she resigned from at the request of the former party president, Cătălin Drulă.

The Save Romania Union (Romanian: Uniunea Salvați România, USR) is a liberal political party in Romania that sits on the centre to centre-right of the political spectrum. The party has been described as one “whose chief identity marker is not a clear program or ideology, but the profile of its candidates.” It has also been referred to as a bringing together of “neoliberals, environmentalists, left-liberals, genuine social democrats, Christian Democrats, NGO supporters and minority rights activists”. Another source labelled the party as “a diverse group of activists, academics and people from business and the arts, which grew out of a Save Bucharest movement to protect the city’s historic buildings.” Its politics have been labelled by some as syncretic.

Sounds about like the No Labels Party here in the US.

Ion-Marcel Ciolacu (born 28 November 1967) is a Romanian politician who currently serves as the prime minister of Romania. He is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) since 2019. As a previously little-known politician outside of Buzău County, where he owns a pastry shop and a consulting firm, Ciolacu came into national prominence when he became the deputy prime minister in 2018 in the cabinet of Prime Minister Mihai Tudose.

His premiership was described by opposition figures as illiberal, or authoritarian, being accused of limiting press freedom. He was also accused of economic mismanagement; under Ciolacu, Romania reached the highest external debt, while inflation reached 7.3%, the highest in the European Union (where the average was 3.1%), and the second-highest in all of Europe, only behind Turkey (as of February 2024).

The Social Democratic Party (Romanian: Partidul Social Democrat, PSD) is the largest political party in Romania. The party has been described as having centre-left rhetoric and economic policies, while being more conservative on personal and ethical matters. According to Florin Poenaru, “the movement led by Ion Iliescu was from the very beginning the party of local capitalists and not of the industrial proletariat. ... PSD was the party that aggregated the interests of the autochthonous capitalists, but whose electoral basis was the former industrial proletariat.” Poenaru states that PSD never said no to the neoliberal agenda but applied it rather slowly. Political analyst Radu Magdin said that the PSD is “a catch-all party: its values are conservative, its economic policy is liberal and it has a social, left-leaning rhetoric when it comes to public policies.” An example is their calls for both tax cuts and pensions and wages increase in 2016.

I don’t know who I would favor in this election. (I don’t know if the description of Călin Georgescu as “pro-Russian, anti-NATO, and far-right, and he has been described as an ultranationalist, far-right populist, and extremist.” is accurate.

[John Semmens]

“his views have been described as pro-Russian, anti-NATO, and far-right, and he has been described as an ultranationalist, far-right populist, and extremist.”

Sounds like the progressive objections to Trump in the US.