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He believes nanobotsQANATONATOEUEUINSCOPEUEUYour browser does not support the element. are secretly inserted in cans of Pepsi. Covid does not exist, and the moon landings were faked. He thinks a global political struggle is being waged between Satan and the Archangel Michael. He admires Vladimir Putin and would cut aid for Ukraine. On December 8th Calin Georgescu (pictured) might have been elected president of Romania. But two days earlier the country’s constitutional court annulled the election and instructed that it be run again. Romanians are divided between those who think the court has saved their democracy and those who think it has been subverted.A month ago Mr Georgescu was seen as a crankish no-hoper, drawing about 5% in polls. But in the first round of the election on November 24th he came first with 23%. Just before the second-round run-off against Elena Lasconi, a lacklustre centre-right candidate, one poll had him leading with 58%. This was a political earthquake.Mr Georgescu is a former soil scientist and specialist in sustainable development. Oana Popescu, head of the GlobalFocus Centre, a think-tank in Bucharest, knew him in his moderate days, and says he later “went bonkers, turning into this fascistic, non, deep-state conspiracist”. He joined the hard-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians party, but left it in 2022 over criticism of his pro-Russian and anti- views (and his praise of the Iron Guard, Romania’s inter-war fascists). With no party organisation, few took Mr Georgescu’s presidential candidacy seriously.The president can significantly influence foreign and security policy, so Mr Georgescu’s threats to end Romania’s staunch support for Ukraine are not taken lightly. Mr Georgescu says he is pro-peace, not pro-Russian. But his contempt for and the would obviously have been a gift to Mr Putin, and to Russia-friendly leaders in Hungary and Slovakia.How did Mr Georgescu go from nowhere to first place in two weeks? On November 28th the Romanian intelligence services presented evidence of illegal campaign financing, illegal use of social media and “Russian hybrid actions” against the country’s internet infrastructure. They compared the influence operation to those apparently carried out by Russia during Moldova’s presidential election and referendum on joining the in October. The constitutional court ordered a recount, but found no major issues. On December 5th it gave the go-ahead for the second round, only to reverse itself next day.The court said it was annulling the election because voters were “misinformed” and that the candidate had benefited illegally from “the abusive exploitation of social-media platform algorithms”. His campaign materials were not properly labelled, and the will of the voters was “distorted” (though the court did not directly rule that Russia had interfered). Mr Georgescu’s campaign was promoted mainly via the social-media platform TikTok, where networks of accounts amplified his videos. TikTok played down the abuse, saying the networks were “small-scale”.There is little doubt that TikTok was manipulated to boost Mr Georgescu, but there were other factors. Remus Stefureac, the head of , a polling firm, says that roughly a third of the votes in both the presidential election and the parliamentary poll held on December 1st went to radical right-wing candidates. On October 5th the constitutional court banned Diana Sosoaca, an anti-semitic, pro-Putin candidate, from standing, arguing that her views were anti-constitutional. Many of her supporters then backed Mr Georgescu. In the parliamentary elections Ms Sosoaca’s party took more than 7% of the votes.Opinion polls show support for Russia is lower than 10%, says Mr Stefureac; most Romanians who vote for the radical right do so for economic and social reasons. Many are rural voters who have not gained from Romania’s recent economic boom or its membership of the . Others belong to the country’s 5m-strong diaspora, and feel they were forced to leave home by corrupt politicians’ failure to spread prosperity. Since 2021 Romania’s main centre-left and centre-right parties have governed in coalition, and many voters feel deprived of a meaningful alternative. After the indecisive parliamentary election, the centrist coalition is likely to continue.Russia is certainly trying to influence elections in nearby states. Moldova accuses the Kremlin of spending $15m to bribe its citizens to vote against joining the . Georgia’s election last month saw widespread allegations of ballot-stuffing by the Russia-friendly governing party. But the evidence that Russia was behind social-media manipulation in Romania is preliminary. Annulling a presidential election, on the other hand, is an extraordinary step. Those who voted for Mr Georgescu will feel ignored. When the presidential election is rerun, he will probably be excluded. But the reasons why Romanians voted for him cannot be banned.
