Over the last few months Romania has been undergoing an electoralist crisis. The crisis was precipitated by the unexpected ascendance of the “far-right populist” candidate Calin Georgescu to the status of front runner in the first round of the presidential elections in November 2024. This round was annulled by Romania’s Constitutional Court.
The Constitutional Court’s unprecedented decision — which is final — came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia organized thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms such as TikTok and Telegram.
The court, without naming Georgescu, said that one of the 13 candidates in the Nov. 24 first round had improperly received “preferential treatment” on social media, distorting the outcome of the vote.
Needless to say, despite being dutifully echoed in the Western media, no evidence was provided to the public to back the claims of Russian meddling. Later reports seemed to be rather vague about those claims:
The European Union’s executive has opened a formal investigation into TikTok because of “serious indications” of foreign interference in the recent Romanian presidential election using the video-sharing platform.
The second-round vote was cancelled earlier this month after declassified intelligence documents revealed 25,000 TikTok accounts were suddenly activated weeks before polls opened in the first round.
Of course, even if the “intelligence” claims were true, the notion that “preferential treatment” in some organ of the media can be a valid reason for annulling an election is laughable. By this standard each and every elections since the advent of mass media should be annulled.
The reports did helpfully give indications of what was really motivating the clear violation of the normal electoralist rules of the game:
[I]ndependent candidate Calin Georgescu, a largely unknown far-right campaigner[,] described Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “patriot and a leader”, although he denied being a fan.
Georgescu had campaigned to end political and military aid to Ukraine.
He is a conspiracy theorist who does not believe in the moon landings or the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was also made clear that much of the energy behind the annulment came from outside of Romania:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said democracies had to be protected from foreign meddling.
EU regulators will assess if TikTok’s advertising policies and the systems it uses to recommend content to users are in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is aimed at preventing the spread of disinformation and halting illegal activities online.
“Whenever we suspect such interference, especially during elections, we must act swiftly and firmly,” von der Leyen said in a statement.
But the annulment was, it turns out, just the first act. In the second act, which played on February 25th, Georgescu was detained as he was on his way to file papers for participating in the elections re-run. Georgescu was interrogated for 5 hours and charged with “communicating false information, promoting war criminals and fascist organisations and forming an antisemitic organisation”.
The third act took place over the last few days and had Georgescu barred by the Constitutional Court from participating in the elections re-run altogether. The decision was upheld on appeal.
To summarize: Electoral results where the opposition won were canceled by the authorities based on claims of foreign meddling. The opposition candidate who won those elections and who was expected to win a rerun was blocked from running by the sitting government and its allies in the judiciary and was charged with breaking the law in some ways that have not been discussed up until he became, unexpectedly, the leading candidate. It is hard to imagine a more blatant violation of the rules of electoralism. It is a testimony to the magnitude of the crisis of the Western electoralist-based system that it needs to resort to such tactics. It is also a testimony to the distance between the pretensions of the system to its reality that these developments do not cause any widespread outrage or even surprise in any circles of influence. Naturally, all those who never tire of telling the world about the repression of minor opposition candidates by various enemies of the West are accepting the developments in Romania with applause or, at best, with silence.
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
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avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
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Equality by lot 
Similar interference to place in Ukraine in 2004. It is rarely mentioned.
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/revisiting-our-secret-role-in-ukraines-2004-orange-revolution
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/incoming/agent-orange-our-secret-role-in-ukraine/article1354140/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
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The color revolution playbook is more of a standard electoralist technique. The story around it is that the people really want change and the color revolution is a real expression of their will, an expression that the oppressive government is trying to block. In the color revolution elections the incumbent in running as well, it is only that the people choose not to vote for him. (Of course, this “choice” is shaped using a sustained intensive campaign of destabilization and propaganda.)
The situation in Romania is in fact the opposite. In this case, the incumbent (with the support of the established opposition – what in the case of Russia is denigrated as the “controlled opposition”) block a successful opposition candidate by removing them from the ballot. In this case “our side” is playing the role of the oppressive ruler that the color revolution is supposedly aiming to overthrow.
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Good grief…it’s only ever surprising these days when they *don’t* blame “The Russians” for things not going their way.
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To represent the Ukrainian revolution as somehow the product of foreign interference is absurd. It is not in the gift of any intelligence service to produce a revolution in another country – only to feed flames that are already present. It is as absurd as suggesting that Georgescu’s victory was the product of foreign meddling – whatever Russian efforts may have been made to boost him, they can only have played on tendencies already present in Romania.
The question of whether the Constitutional Court and the government are right to suppress him, on the other hand, is a completely different question. It is vital to the prosperity and physical security of Europe, not to mention the liberal freedoms that permit us to agitate for sortition without fear for our own safety, that Putinists be sealed out of power. I can only hope the governments of Germany, France and the UK take similar or even more drastic steps to crush their own far-right insurgent parties. Only that can enable a European defensive alliance to be formed before the wolf is at all our doors.
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Those foolish Romanian sheep electing the very wolf who would devour them! Thank goodness they have von der Leyen and the rest of the benevolent European and Romanian elites to protect them from their own foolishness.
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Happy to find out that the CIA did not overthrow Moseddegh or Allende. I’m always impressed by arguments that begin with characterizing opposing views as absurd without addressing the particulars. Also heartening to know that the sortition isn’t movement has dogmatists so certain of their position that they can slap labels on others and bar them from political action.
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Mossadegh and Allende’s overthrows were coups, not revolutions. As for the rest of both your points, my position is ‘unironically yes’, with any caveats being secondary, so I’ll leave it there.
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Mossadegh and Allende’s overthrows were coups, not revolutions.
So what, it doesn’t matter what you call it. Outside forces changed the government.
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It is arguable whether even the Maidan can be called a revolution, since it did not have popular support:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7158
But the planned overturning of the election by a small group of outsiders, is by most English speakers, other than you and your fellow neocons, called a coup. It checked more boxes for coup than the Bush-Gore election shenanigans. At least the Republicans did not have a ready team in waiting to challenge the election that I am aware of.
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The Guardian: Romania bans second far-right hopeful from presidential election rerun https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/15/romania-bans-second-far-right-hopeful-from-presidential-election-re-run
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So anyone can run for office in Romania so long as they meet with the approval of the electoral commission. Some sortitionists consider that to be democratic.
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What’s interesting here is the way sortitionists – who purportedly agree elections aren’t democratic – nevertheless seem to think a court banning fascists from running in them can somehow make them less democratic. ‘Democracy’ means ‘a political system that reliably tracks the plebeian interest’. This means a precondition for democracy is that fascists never, ever come to power. Is Romania a democracy by this definition? No, we all agree it is not. So why the huffing and puffing about the supposed rights of disgusting fascists to contest its elections?
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Oliver,
Your point that electoralist systems are anti-democratic in all their manifestations – whether closer or farther from the electoralist ideal – is a good one. Your inference, that getting worked up over which variation of electoralism we are dealing with is unjustified, is also valid.
However, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that those who are inclined to exclude certain electoralist candidates would also be inclined to exclude certain citizens from an allotted body. What is your position on this matter?
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[…] recent judgment against Marine Le Pen in France has been compared to the decision against Georgescu in Romania. In each case a prominent “extreme right wing” candidate in a European country has been […]
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[…] capitalists. At the extreme, we are told that people vote for undesirable elements (Trump, Georgescu) because of some fake online accounts or online ads by the Russians or the Chinese, whose influence […]
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