The decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court will shock even those who have seen a lot, said the expert on the subject.
The Constitutional Court of Romania made a historic decision: it invalidated the first round of the presidential election and ordered the restart of the entire election process. The decision was made unanimously by the nine constitutional judges after a five-hour deliberation. The ruling is effective immediately and requires the government to set a new election date and restart campaigning and preparations.
The Romanian Constitutional Court took an extraordinary step and annulled the presidential election
The precedent for the decision was President Klaus Iohannis' move to declassify the classified documents of the Supreme National Defense Council (CSAT). These revealed that Călin Georgescu's campaign was supported by a foreign power, presumably Russia, with manipulation techniques.
According to intelligence services, Georgescu's TikTok campaign was aided by a network of more than 25,000 accounts that was created as early as 2016 and used the tools of Russian hybrid warfare. More than 85,000 cyber attacks against election systems were registered, which were disguised with advanced, anonymous technologies.
Kelemen Hunor, the president of RMDSZ, called the decision unprecedented.
and demanded full transparency. "In addition to the reasoning of the Constitutional Court, it is necessary that the presidential office, intelligence and the prosecutor's office inform the public in detail. Otherwise, citizens' trust in state institutions may be permanently lost," he warned.
Elena Lasconi, the candidate of the Save Romania Association (USR), who made it to the second round, sharply criticized the decision. "The Romanian state trampled on democracy. You are pushing the country into anarchy!" he said passionately.
Lasconi is probably the biggest loser of the Constitutional Court's decision, because - according to surveys - he would have won the second round of the presidential election scheduled for this Sunday.
Marcel Ciolacu, the president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), on the other hand, approved the decision, stressing that the Russian interference seriously distorted the election results. At the same time, he urged that those responsible be held accountable.
Nicolae Ciucă, leader of the National Liberal Party (PNL), called for calm: "Such a situation is a difficult test for our democratic institutions, but we must maintain calm and unity."
George Simion, the president of the Association for the Unification of Romanians (AUR), urged his sympathizers to calm down. "This system must fail democratically," he wrote on his social media page, rejecting street demonstrations.
On the other hand, Diana Șoșoacă, head of SOS Romania, sharply criticized the constitutional judges, whom she threatened with arrest. In his opinion, the elections were already invalid when he was excluded from the presidential candidates.
According to Cristian Diaconescu, Romania was under attack, and in order to protect the democratic processes, the right decision was made to annul the presidential election. The independent candidate emphasized that holding the aggressor accountable and restoring trust in the institutions is essential to avoid future attacks.
The appointment of the new election date is the responsibility of the government, and is expected by March at the latest.
President Klaus Iohannis can remain in office until then, but according to the interpretation of the Constitution, his mandate ends only when the new president is sworn in. According to some experts, there is a danger that the leadership of the country may temporarily fall to the president of the Senate.
However, according to political scientist Cristian Tudor Popescu, it would be scandalous if Georgescu could run again in the elections. "How could he be accepted as a candidate again when the results had to be invalidated precisely because of his manipulated campaign?" he asked the question.
The political palette is divided, the situation is uncertain, and the outcome of the events may fundamentally determine the future of Romania. One thing is certain: the coming months will be crucial for the country's stability.
Zsolt Pászkán, the external expert of the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs, said in relation to the topic: "The decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court a few hours ago can surprise even those who - like myself - have already seen a lot and the opposite.
But even in this country with a lot of experience, there is no example of the Constitutional Court annulling an election result for reasons and evidence that are not yet known, especially by declaring the first round valid a few days ago!"
He continued: moreover, the Constitutional Court itself is not helping to eliminate the chaos, to which it itself contributed, among other things.
with the highly questionable previous decision by which he excluded candidate Diana Şoşoacă from the presidential election. Because the above-mentioned press release, consisting of three points in total, does not mention a single word about the reasons or the evidence, but only states that it destroys the entire presidential election process (point 1) and that the decision regarding the date of the new election is the responsibility of the government and task (point 2) and that the decision is final and generally binding.
Pászkán considers it important to record that November 23-24. no one questioned the voting process of the first round during the period neither then nor since.
The expert further explained: therefore, all the interpretations that have appeared in the public in the hours since the decision by Romanian (and Western!) politicians, as well as by experts or media representatives, including the alleged involvement of Russia, the role of TikTok, and the documents prepared by the Romanian secret services and declassified only on December 4, 2024, i.e. 8 days after the presidential election, relate to the role played in the decision of the Constitutional Court,
they look much more like alibis created by secret services to cover up their incompetence than the results of serious and well-founded investigations.
According to Pászkán, even if it were true that the Constitutional Court overwrote its previous decision declaring the first round valid (!) based on these documents, it would cause even more chaos,
since the published documents attributed to the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) and the secret service of the Ministry of the Interior (MAI) are of such poor quality (especially the SIE material) that even in the first semester of the media-communication major could hardly get a grade better than satisfactory.
He believes that if an ongoing election can be blown because "in Russian TV political discussion programs, Russian journalists suggest that the pro-Russian forces in Romania can get more than 30 percent in the parliamentary election."
(SIE material), or because the account of a person with a blacked-out name shows several photos taken one day before the end of the election campaign, which promote the independent candidate and, separately, older photos of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin is promoted. According to the Facebook profile, the person marked Moscow as his place of residence around 2018-2019" (MAI material), and because the ""Balance and Spine" information campaign is the same as the "Brother by Brother" campaign conducted by the Russian Federation in Ukraine , both accomplished by manipulating legitimate micro-influencers,”
then anything is possible in Romania, since the "evidence" listed above does not reveal anything that they have anything to do with any of the candidates.
If, on the other hand, more information is available than this, the publication of this "excerpt" was not only unnecessary, but also deepened distrust towards the institutions of the Romanian state.
The researcher points out: if the Romanian state does not manage to urgently and completely pour clean water into the glass and come up with irrefutable, professionally supported evidence that reveals individual responsibilities, then not only the repeated presidential election (and perhaps even the parliamentary election, since the hyper-progressive pocket party , the representative of DREPT, Vlad Gheorghe, has now challenged the latter's result as well), but all Romanian elections are also under the shadow of suspicion and it will be overshadowed by general mistrust, and then we can truly and rightly say that the Romanian (!) "parallel state" has erased even the last trace of the damaged and bogus free elections in Romania.
However, in a state in which the institutions of the Romanian state can be brought to their knees with (allegedly!) a few TikTok accounts, a number of "progressives" are willing to sacrifice the Hungarian communities across the border in the ideological fight against the Romanian and Hungarian government, often in a passive-aggressive way. "The Hungarian community in Romania, which is under pressure from the Hungarian side and the Hungarian side beyond the border, cannot count on much protection from Bucharest.
This, especially one day after December 5th, is a warning calling for responsible action! - concluded the expert.
Cover photo: Zsolt Pászkán
Source: YouTube/Screenshot
