Romania’s top constitutional court has cancelled the ongoing presidential elections and ordered re-election after a far-right independent candidate won the first round of the polls. The decision of the top court came after allegations that Călin Georgescu won the polls because of Russian influence.
Independent presidential contender Călin Georgescu, who was nowhere in the scene just weeks ago, as the frontrunner in the first-round vote on November 24, and was about to contest the run-off election against pro-EU candidate Elena Lasconi of Save Romania Union party on Sunday.
The constitutional court’s order, which can’t be contested, came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence reports alleging that Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote far-right outsider Călin Georgescu. The alleged Russian propaganda included thousands of social media accounts that promoted Calin Georgescu across platforms such as TikTok and Telegram.
Earlier on Monday, the constitutional court had validated the first-round results after a recount of the ballots. On the complaint of a candidate who won 1% votes, the court had ordered revalidation of the ballots, and accordingly Central Election Bureau revalidated and recounted all 9.4 million ballots cast in the elections, which ruled out any irregularities in the results.
In the meanwhile, on the allegations of Russian interference in the Romanian elections through social media platforms, European Commission has ordered TikTok to preserve all data on the Romania presidential elections.
The Commission on Thursday ordered the video-sharing app to “preserve internal documents and information” on the workings of its recommender system and how it handles manipulation risks. TikTok also has to store data on breaches of its ban on political advertising.
However, the European Commission order is for all national elections, not just the presidential elections in Romania, and will be in effect till March next year.
