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The December parliamentary and presidential elections split Romania into two camps: pro-European and extremist. In the parliamentary elections, the sovereignists and far-right parties (with anti-EU campaign messages) doubled their electoral score compared to four years ago and the pro-European and pro-NATO parties, with a fragile majority, have a hard time forming a new government. The Romanians’ vote was anti-system and it was a massive vote in both the parliamentary and presidential elections. As far as the presidential elections are concerned, the two major parties currently ruling Romania (PSD and PNL) failed to qualify their candidates in the second round of voting, Romanians being put in the situation of choosing the next president between an independent candidate (with nationalist and pro-Kremlin ideas who considers the national poet Mihai Eminescu to be the most dangerous man on earth after Jesus) whose campaign is currently under investigation by state bodies and a candidate expressing pro-European values. Regardless of which of the two will become president for the next 5 years, Romania will have great economic difficulties and there will certainly be protests in the streets as each of the two camps is unhappy with the other’s candidate. Political experts categorize the presidential final as a duel in the form of a referendum on Romania’s future in Europe and NATO. Romania’s new president will be elected by popular vote on the 8th of December. The two candidates in the final are Călin Georgescu (independent) and Elena Lasconi (USR). Donald Trump’s return to the White House obliges Romania to develop a balanced foreign policy towards the US. This policy, which emphasizes Romania’s geopolitical importance, will not be made by a president who receives his marching orders from Moscow. The two candidates who reached the final represent the dissatisfaction of citizens with the current political and administrative system that has governed Romania for the past 35 years.
Which parties entered parliament and why is it difficult to form a new government?
In the parliamentary elections organized on Romania’s National Day (according to many specialists, the choice of the date was uninspired), seven political parties met the electoral threshold to enter Parliament. The political parties that have passed the 5% threshold are: PSD (Social Democratic Party), AUR (Alliance for the Unity of Romanians), PNL (National Liberal Party), USR (Save Romania Union), S.O.S. Romania, POT (Young People’s Party) and UDMR (Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania). The distribution of these parties in the two chambers of Romania’s bicameral national legislature (Senate and Chamber of Deputies) is as follows: in the Senate: PSD – 22.40%, AUR – 18.30%, PNL – 14.28%, USR – 12.26%, S.O.S. Romania – 7.76%, POT – 6.39%, UDMR – 6.38%. As for the Chamber of Deputies, the electoral percentages are as follows: PSD-21,96%, AUR-18,01%, PNL-13,20%, USR-12,40%, S.O.S.-7,36%, POT-6,46%, UDMR-6,33%, respectively. The high number of parties that gained access to the Parliament (7 in number) is explained as an anti-system vote given by an electorate increasingly dissatisfied with the current Romanian political class. This sanctioning of the traditional parties (PSD-PNL) means that Romania has a fragmented parliament with a major risk of a change of parliamentary majority, which could easily lead to the fall of the next government and the entry into a political crisis. In the context of Romania’s sovereign debts, this political crisis will inevitably lead to an economic crisis with a domino effect.
If we look at the percentages presented above, in terms of arithmetical calculations, it can be seen that no parliamentary majority can be formed without the participation of the PSD, while the parties considered to be extreme (before the redistribution of votes to political parties that did not meet the 5% electoral threshold) have a combined total of around 30 percent, and if they are in opposition they will have an important platform to launch their political messages and thus increase the citizens’ voting intentions in the future. The so-called far-right parties will not be able to form a government on their own, just as the PSD+PNL+UDMR do not have the necessary number of MPs to be able to form a “coalition of stability”. At the same time, this fragmentation of the parliament between pro-EU, pro-US and extremist forces could lead to the validation of a non-functional government (which will always be a few votes away from being dismissed) and implicitly to a series of political crises. These political crises superimposed on the future economic crisis foreshadowed by inflation and also anticipated by the leaders of the World Bank and the European Central Bank will make Romania an unstable train on the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union. At the same time, the subject of the war in Ukraine will be constantly brought before Romania’s future parliament by radical parties which will constantly feed new conspiracy theories. December’s vote shows that citizens no longer trust the old leaders and the old system and if the traditional parties do not understand this message, they risk becoming increasingly insignificant. On the other hand, the extremist parties that have reached almost 30%, even if they will not be able to form a future government, have enough power and visibility to be able to harm the European path of the Romanian state.
Romania could elect its first far-right president
Romanians are being called to the polls on the 8th of December to choose between staying on the pro-European path or taking a leap into the unknown. With PISA tests showing that the functional illiteracy rate in the last ten years has been between 40 and 45%, and taking into account the high drop-out rate, functional illiteracy in Romania is over 50%. This is reflected in the surprise vote and the entry of an independent candidate in the presidential final, who claimed that he had not spent a single cent on the election campaign, despite the fact that he promoted himself mainly on social networks (especially Tik Tok). Although Romania has a solid legislation that can condemn dangerous demonstrations commemorating leaders of the legionary movement or who have been accused of extreme violence against Jews and for political assassinations during the interwar period, magistrates either do not bother too much or they are also sympathizers of such actions. For example, the independent candidate Călin Georgescu, in his social media posts during the election campaign, considers Zelea Codreanu (the founder of the legionary movement in Romania) and Marshal Ion Antonescu “martyrs” of the Romanian people, who “did good deeds”. The General Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal case against Georgescu in 2022, which was quickly dismissed “for lack of evidence”. Călin Georgescu is accused by his detractors of being pro-Russian and avoids answering journalists when they ask him about his opinion of Vladimir Putin, for whom he has expressed admiration in the past. Georgescu is also a critic of the EU and NATO, saying he does not want to leave these bodies but wants to “put Romania back on the world map”. The independent candidate also opposes military aid from the EU and the US to Ukraine. Georgescu’s mystical nationalist rhetoric has struck a chord on social media and has caused concern on the old continent.
Given that the majority that will be made by the followers of democracy in the future parliament will be quite slim and complicated to put together, with 30% of MPs labeled as extremists, nostalgic of legionnaireism and Nazism, Romania could take the opposite direction to the one desired by the leaders in Brussels. The bookmakers were right to bet on Donald Trump’s victory in the US. Why wouldn’t they have the same predictability when debating the Romanian presidential election? Just as in the case of the elections in the United States, when bookmakers bet on Donald Trump’s victory, the bookmakers are giving the signal, despite the opinion polls that failed miserably in the first round of the presidential elections (whoever bet that Georgescu would win the first round got a huge odds, 555.00, practically with 2 euros bet on it, one would have won over 1100 euros), that the victory in the second round of the election for the Romanian president will be won by Elena Lasconi. If initially Călin Georgescu was the favorite in the bookmakers’ opinion in the duel with Elena Lasconi, the odds have reversed. The odds initially offered to Georgescu at the bookmakers was 1.60 while Lasconi was given the second chance, 2.05. The bookmakers have reversed the odds of victory of the two candidates overnight and considered Lasconi as the favorite, with odds of 1.75 while Georgescu has odds of 1.85. All these changes in the odds come after the Presidential Administration declassified the documents from the last CSAT (Supreme Council for National Defense) meeting. State institutions have presented a possible involvement of a “state actor” to manipulate voters, with a modus operandi similar to the one used by Russia before the invasion of Ukraine. The same Romanian state institutions have revealed that in Călin Georgescu’s election campaign, for spreading the videos on TikTok, there were sponsorships of over one million euro, although the independent candidate declared zero campaign expenses. The financing of Georgescu’s campaign is under investigation and investigators have opened a criminal case for violation of electoral legislation. The mandate of an elected candidate can be invalidated under the law on political party and campaign financing, if the detailed report of electoral income and expenses for each political party or independent candidate has not been submitted in accordance with the law.
A “group” of pro-Russian influencers in Romania has been removed from TikTok after the Chinese company was accused that TikTok’s algorithms favored Călin Georgescu in the first round of the elections. TikTok’s global head of product, Brie Pegum, when questioned about the platform’s influence in the Romanian election campaign, said in the European Parliament that two groups of accounts promoting the candidacy of independent Georgescu and former NATO secretary general Mircea Geoană were removed for violating the platform’s rules on unmarked political advertising. On Sunday, Romanians have a very clear choice in the second round of the presidential election. To choose Elena Lasconi, a liberal-democrat, EU, NATO, US, pro-US, pro-Israel candidate who promises continuity and a measure of stability. Or choose the independent Călin Georgescu and mortgage Romania’s future to Moscow. Regardless of the outcome of the 8th of December elections, Romania will go through an extremely difficult period in the near future from an economic point of view and if the political instability persists, there is every chance that we will have early elections next year.
Ptoto:Pickpik.com