The leader of the far-right party Alliance for the Union of Romania (AUR), George Simion, emerges as the winner of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections, according to the initial official results, confirming the lead already indicated by all exit polls. However, his victory will not be enough, and he will have to compete in a runoff on the 18th.
With almost 99% of the votes counted, Simion receives 40% of the ballots, well above the expectations from the polls conducted at the end of the voting day.
Simion will face the current mayor of Bucharest and independent candidate, Nicusor Dan, who obtained nearly 21%. The candidate of the official coalition, the historian and former president of the National Liberal Party, Crin Antonescu, is out of the race. Dan and Antonescu represented the pro-European and more moderate vote in this election.
The turnout, around 53%, was very similar to the one recorded in the elections last November, won by the extremist Calin Georgescu - a figure who has publicly expressed admiration for the fascist regime that led Romania in the past century and allied with Hitler - and which were annulled by the Constitutional Court due to massive manipulation of the campaign through social media.
In an effort to rally the supporters of Georgescu behind his candidacy - who was also banned from running again in the election - Simion showed up early in the morning at his polling center accompanied by Georgescu himself, whom he promised to appoint as prime minister if he becomes the head of state.
"Christ has risen! I voted for Calin Georgescu," declared Simion in the same strident tone as his companion after casting his vote.
"We are here with one mission: we want a return to constitutional order, a return to democracy. My only goal is to achieve the top position (the presidency) for the Romanian people. We are here with one desire: to bring justice to Romania," added the AUR candidate.
Meanwhile, Georgescu insisted that his disqualification was "a fraud orchestrated by those who have made cunning the only state policy. But I am here to acknowledge the power of democracy, the power of the vote that scares the system, that terrifies the system."
The day was shaken by an attack from a group of pro-Russian hackers against the official coalition candidate's website, Crin Antonescu, and some other internet spaces like the Ministry of Interior or the Ministry of Justice.
According to local media, the cyber assault was claimed by NoName057, an obscure conglomerate of alleged Russian specialists who have already claimed responsibility for other similar attacks, especially against Ukrainian interests or countries allied with this State.
Crin Antonescu acknowledged on Facebook that he had been a victim of this action, which he attributed to "the dark forces of extremism."
The French publication Mediapart published a report on Saturday allegedly from the Romanian secret services claiming that their Russian counterpart devised a plan in 2023 to promote ultraright politicians like the mentioned Georgescu, George Simion, or the outspoken Diana Sosoaca through social media.
The plan was put into practice at the end of the year and involved the participation - mostly unconscious in most cases - of up to 130 influencers who were hired to spread generic messages about an "ideal candidate," which were then flooded with favorable comments about Georgescu, encouraged automatically.
TikTok admitted in April that it had detected the existence of 27,000 fake accounts that supported Georgescu, which in turn were followed by another 70,000. The social platform acknowledged that it was "an attempt to manipulate the discourse of the elections in Romania" using "electronic addresses (IP) located in Turkey" but using email services from Russia.
Simion has become the heir of the discontent expressed by Romanians last November when they surprisingly gave victory to such a controversial figure as Georgescu, whom many experts describe as a kind of messiah combining admiration for the fascism that ruled the country in the past century - when Bucharest allied with Hitler during World War II - and the authoritarian nature of the communist autocracy that settled in the country after the war.
Although writer Hunor Kelemen, who leads the party of the Hungarian minority - allied with pro-European formations - stated that Romanians "do not want to return to the past" and were voting "to move forward and avoid a forced landing, which would mean stepping back at least 30 or 35 years in history," the final result in two weeks "will be decided by the votes of Romanians abroad," noted analyst and sociologist Marius Pielianu on the local station Antena 3.
The mobilization of the diaspora - among whom Georgescu also won in November - was already detected from the beginning of the voting last Friday. In the end, the votes cast abroad were close to a million (970,000), well above the 821,000 counted last year.
"On the first day of voting, we had a participation three times higher than in November last year. It's a general trend. We've seen it in Spain, Italy, the UK, and France," highlighted Pielianu.
Remus Ioan, director of the think tank Inscop, expressed similar sentiments and said that "the diaspora's vote will write the history of the first round and almost certainly that of the second. It's a story that will be remembered for many generations."
The accelerated deterioration of the credibility of the ruling class of a country that only regained democracy 35 years ago was evident recently when the "democracy index" of the prestigious magazine The Economist indicated that Romania has dropped another step in that ranking, moving from a "flawed democracy" to a "hybrid regime".
A comprehensive study conducted two years ago by the think tank Inscop confirmed the significant popular skepticism towards the most relevant political institutions of the country - plagued by corruption and inefficiency - whose credibility has plummeted. Only 17.4% of Romanians, as stated in this report, trusted the Parliament, 19.4% the Government, and 29.8% the Presidency.
Statistics regarding the quality of life in the country are among the lowest in the European Union. For example, young people under 25 have the highest unemployment rate in the entire continental bloc. Another study by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation warned last year that in the same age group (young people between 18 and 34), 41% believe that Romania needs a dictatorship. "Surveys show that even Ceaucescu has a positive image among most Romanians," commented presidential candidate Nicusor Dan to this newspaper.
Simion's triumph reinforces "the risk of the extreme right reaching the top of the State", as stated in the editorial of the publication G4 Media, one of the most reputable in the country, which poses "an existential threat to the Western democratic order. If that happens, Romania will not only be on the path to leaving the European Union but also towards economic collapse."
According to the analyst and editor of the same publication, Cristian Pantazi, "Romania has become a key target for the Administration (of US President, Donald) Trump, a key state to impose the (ultraconservative) MAGA ideology in the heart of the European Union. It is as important as Germany. It is no coincidence that lately, Washington has been strongly targeting both countries," he wrote in reference to the recent accusations by Vice President J.D. Vance against Berlin for declaring the German radical party AfD as an "extremist organization."
Simion is not the only politician in Central Europe running for election under the umbrella of the ultraconservative MAGA movement that propelled Trump to the Presidency. The Polish Karol Nawrocki, who is running for the presidential elections in his country on the 18th, met with the American head of state this week in what was seen as an endorsement of his candidacy. Several high-ranking Polish officials of the same ideology arrived in Bucharest in recent days to express their explicit support for Simion, who explained to this newspaper that his potential ultimate victory is part of a general MAGA project to take control of European governments and "block" Brussels' politics.