The Failure Dilemma: What’s gone wrong in the Romanian presidential elections of 2024?
Romania just underwent one of the shakiest times since the inception of its post-revolutionary democracy
“First of all, it was a failure. The fact that we, as a state, reached the point of cancelling elections, it was a failure of certain institutions: The Permanent Electoral Authority (Autoritatea Electorala Permanenta), the Intelligence Services. It was certainly a failure.”
Nicusor Dan - newly announced presidential candidate and current Mayor of Bucharest
What happened in Romania is concerning. It is concerning not only because of the cancellation of the election in itself, but due to the circumstances which led to the cancelling of the election process in one of NATO’s frontier democracies. The events witnessed in Romania ought to be put into the broader perspective of democratic resilience in the Euro-Atlantic, when the countries forming it can be one election away from falling under the far-reaching blanket of subversive power.
What started on the 22nd of November as the true hope of the Romanian people in choosing their future, has ended on the 6th of December with complete disdain and confusion. The two-round presidential election was filled with ad hoc responses to the underdog, the candidate who flew beneath the radar, Calin Georgescu.
2024 was the election year around the globe, and Romania got to close this sequence with, by the judgement of pollsters, strong Euro-Atalantic candidates like Mircea Geoana (ex-NATO Deputy SG), Elena Lasconi (transformative mayor of Campulung Muscel) and Nicolae Ciuca (General in the Romania armed forces and strong advocate for US-Romanian collaboration). All these candidates were presented in the media articles as having 10s of percentage point, while scrolling down, Calin Georgescu was somewhere, down there with the obscure, holding only 5.4%.
When the election result emerged in the first round, people were bewildered, wondering how a man few have heard of can win more than 2 million votes? Those who voted for him only then learned about his past, with each newspaper scrambling before the second round to tell everyone how dangerous he is. Yet his appeal remained as millions of hits on social media provided the public a glimpse of the mysterious candidate.
In the words of former president of Romania, Traian Basescu:
“We were about to elect a president without ever seeing him, a president created by robots. We are on the verge of making a robot president. This individual has not met with citizens, has not traveled across the country, and has not held the traditional meetings. Some messages fabricated by Artificial Intelligence have positioned him as the leader in the first round.It is unacceptable that someone could become the President of Romania without being seen, without being known, simply because money was spent on... messages.”
In short, the presidential election in Romania was a failure of both democracy itself and the institutions which were ought to protect it, as a major lack of oversight led to a sudden cancellation of the election due to the controversial, successful candidacy of Calin Georgescu, the man with 0 EUR in declared spending for his campaign.
Institutions which were supposed to put a stop to the malicious and non-constitutional behavior of Calin Georgescu’s campaigning strategies seemed dormant right until the very minute the second round was supposed to start. Meanwhile, democracy itself failed as the many decisions made by the Constitutional Court were severely deprived of transparency.
The overwhelming majority of Calin Georgescu voters’ reasoning behind choosing him lay in the fact that they wanted someone else, a person different from the system. Romania serves as a test tube example of every extremist/populist trend in the Western world. What many don’t understand is that people feel betrayed by the system they have so long believed in.
Here are a few quotes of the Calin Georgescu voters:
“People voted for him because they want CHANGE”
“People want something different from the rest, we all knew what the establishment will be talking about, the past 30 years have been all the same”
“He [Calin Georgescu] promised to make change”
“He [Calin Georgescu] is not a member of a party”
“I found out about him through Social Media and the way he talked caught my attention”
“I do not know anything regarding his neo-legionary ties…”
So…People feel betrayed. Supporters did not (at least most of them) vote for Calin Georgescu’s views and sympathies of leaders of the fascist Iron Guard, but they still found out about him, discovered his less controversial speeches, and he clearly gained popularity with the help of social media, as one voter said. In Romania there are two primary debates. One is why is Calin Georgescu not inquired further by the relevant institutions regarding his statements. The Second one, which led to the cancelling of elections, was regarding the rather dubious campaigning strategy of Calin Georgescu. Down below is a summary of the reasoning for why the CCR court has decided to cancel the election:
1. Irregularities and flaws in the electoral process
2. Vote manipulation
3. Undeclared funding
4. Voter misinformation
5. Violation of equal electoral opportunities
6. Non-transparency of electoral promotion
7. External interference
The Constitutional Court based its decision on the Romanian Security Council’s revelation of foreign interference in the election’s process, including thousands of Russian-linked TikTok and other social media accounts, the personal undeclared funding of Calin Georgescu’s campaign, and the lack of compliance with the electoral code were compelling cases for prohibiting the electoral process from taking place.
The Security Council clearly stated that we are talking about a state actor, with millions of Euros involved in hiring influencers and paying social media sites like TikTok to distribute videos of Calin Georgescu. Over 25,000 accounts have been identified as propagators of the candidate. After tracking the origins of the accounts, clear ties to Russia and other interest groups could be concluded, ultimately, a clear image of classic subversion techniques of the hybrid warfare similarly unleashed upon countries like Moldova.
The CCR’s (Romanian Constitutional Court) decision can be seen as a rescue mission, but it was also attacked by different political figures and Calin Georgescu voters for stalling the democratic process. It was proof that at moments of clear uncertainty, democracy can be held up until the next storm is about to arrive. But why so close-called? Where were the intelligence services which were supposed to signal the irregularities of this situation in advance? Why was this unveiled so late? Why does it seem that there is little investigative effort to be conducted on this candidate regarding the controversial statements and figures he has surrounded himself with?
Again, the reason many Romanians went against the decision was because of the lack of transparency in previous decisions, like the recounting scandal. In Romania, the constitutional court is also highly politicized, so the decision allowed the fueling of the exact electorate of the the far-right, that some form of the deep state, of the SYSTEM, is pursuant of undemocratic behaviour.
Romania must be a lesson. In every European university, you will hear about hybrid warfare, you will hear about populism, you will hear about the extremist wave. Yet we have never seen so clearly and so well depicted the mechanisms employed by malign actors in a European Union country. There is now a resurgence of slight fears about the discontent of the pro-Calin Georgescu voters that they could turn violent, ultimately, instigating a further destabilization and trust in the health of our democracy.
I believe that accountability is crucial. I believe that in the end, the intelligence community stepped up, and the Constitutional Court pursued its tasks. But we need to now analyze retrospectively what could have been done differently and what should be done better. Maybe a greater oversight on each individual candidate’s campaign should be approached more vehemently, and maybe the intelligence services should be offered the stage to update and inform the citizens about the risks and ties of certain candidates to certain interest groups. This was an intelligence failure, a democratic failure, and a broader institutional failure due to how the election was cancelled, with more than 53,000 people in the diaspora having already voted.
One more personal note: it is important to remember that, like Georgescu, most populist figures are just opportunists combining different parts of society and administering the right pill to the right audience. Calin Georgescu, one day, was in the church preaching about the Second Coming, and on another igniting striking resemblances of some of the darkest periods in Romanian history.
Much of the analysis right after the cancellation revolved around the parliamentary elections, and the government to be formed. As an update, there is a pro-European coalition, there is a pro-European government, what we should be paying close attention to is how the recent fringe and extremist parties which recently entered the parliament will behave and will shape the public discourse in the coming year. For now, Romania maintains a somewhat ironic atmosphere, as each established political party avoids taking on ministerial roles in the government, knowing that budget cuts and tax hikes are on the horizon. The irony lies in how, despite the ominous mood within the political establishment, the familiar and time-tested fear of raising costs for the electorate still dominates their decision-making. It seems that Romania has always dealt with short term memory, and the promises of a strong-European coalition, have ultimately encountered the age old tell tale stories of cyclical elections. I have a highly optimistic view on the future, and I think that we should look at what happened as a lesson learned, a sticky note which we shall never peel off from the edge of our computer screen.
There is much talk of a universal nature regarding a resilient Europe, a resilient NATO….Well, we need to pivot a bit from overarching critical infrastructure to think introspectively about where each member’s democracy is really at. That’s what needs to be said. There are plenty of well-trained cyber teams in our alliance, so with the right spirit risks can be analyzed in time, voters and institutions can be informed, democracy can thrive in a transparent setting and anything can be achieved. The rescheduled elections are said to take place in either mid-spring or early summer, but for now we have to maintain the incumbent president, and look eagerly at what this newly formed parliament will do in the coming years. It is a shame, because as much as the horrific acts of war in Ukraine are worth of continuous mourning, Romania had a great opportunity to step up and be the bigger brother in the region, had and still has the chance to carry the weight, however it remains to be seen how it will carry its own.
Mihnea Turcitu is a third-year Honors Political Science student at Leiden University, specializing in Intelligence Studies and International Relations. He is passionate about NATO and international security, his work includes analyzing EU foreign policy effectiveness and the long-term security impact of migration. Being the Europe director for EPIS ThinkTank, Mihnea has led teams to deliver insights on European security. Mihnea has been recognized as a Future Leader at the Euro Atlantic Resilience Forum, and has also won accolades for policy proposals on transatlantic security.