Pro-Moscow nationalist heads to Romania presidential runoff after court greenlights first round

BUCHAREST — Romania’s Constitutional Court decided on Monday to certify the country’s first round of presidential elections, allowing the Dec. 8 runoff to proceed as scheduled.

Romania has been plunged into one of its most intense crises since the fall of communism by the shock first-round victory of a virtually unknown nationalist, Călin Georgescu, an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Georgescu’s win in the Nov. 24 ballot has led to misgivings about the country’s stability within the EU and NATO and triggered howls of protest from his opponents, who suspect that covert activity, potentially by Russia, was behind Georgescu’s wildly popular TikTok campaign. 

Running as an independent, Georgescu is due to face liberal Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union (USR) on Sunday. 

The court ordered a ballot recount Thursday over allegations that votes from one candidate, who dropped out a week before the election and threw his support behind Lasconi, were illegally transferred to her on election night. 

Constitutional Court President Marian Enache said all nine justices on the court had agreed the allegation was unfounded and that the election results were thus valid.

While the recount did lead to slightly different vote totals for some candidates, the variations were not due to electoral fraud, Enache told reporters after a court session Monday.

The court’s decision to certify the results will restore some stability to Romania’s electoral process, with the country undergoing three elections (one parliamentary and two presidential rounds) within three weeks. 

Had the court annulled the election it would have inflamed an already tense political situation, with many Romanians suspecting the country’s mainstream parties, which don’t have a candidate in the runoff, of trying to manipulate the outcome.