Conor here: Unsurprisingly, US government mouthpiece Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty omits from the following piece the fact that the great Tik Tok campaign that first ignited the whole controversy around Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu was orchestrated by the political opposition. For more background on that sordid affair and why Georgescu is seen as such a threat, see here. Long story short, the EU and its Romanian underlings blamed it on Russia and nullified the Nov. 24 election. Now they’re using that lie to keep Georgescu off the rerun ballot.
Here’s some more background:
NATO is building the largest NATO military base in all of Europe in Romania, right on Romania’s Black Sea coast pointing at Crimea, the crux point of contest in the Russia-Ukraine war.
NATO feared the man who won Romania’s now-canceled election would cut or shut the base down. pic.twitter.com/esiy9hSGvP
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) December 17, 2024
Maps sometimes tell the story:
Why are the people of Romania not allowed to elect an anti-war president?
This map says it all, like Turkey and Greece, Romania is too important to NATO’s plan to contain Russia…. pic.twitter.com/cWiitJLB0H
— Richard (@ricwe123) December 6, 2024
From 2023, still germane:
Many Russian military analysts conclude that the West-backed Kiev Putsch regime’s continued maritime drone attacks even after Russian strikes destroyed Ukrainian ports on the Danube in Reni & Izmail, is that they are being constructed & launched out of NATO territory in Romania. pic.twitter.com/A49T1Ahjih
— Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1) August 6, 2023
Some questions no longer seem all that outlandish:
EU is a geopolitical project. Romania is too important a piece on the chess board to allow to be free. This mask off moment started with “TikTok Russia meddling.”
Which Europe election will get OnlyFans Russia meddling?
November 27, 2024 👇 pic.twitter.com/RuBKmaZXvi— Alex Christoforou (@AXChristoforou) March 9, 2025
By RFE/RL’s Romanian Service. Originally published at RFE/RL.
Romania’s Central Electoral Board (CEB) rejected the candidacy of far-right politician Calin Georgescu from a rerun of a presidential election, sparking clashes between his supporters, angry at the move, and police.
The CEB said on March 9 that it disqualified Georgescu’s application based on the Constitutional Court ruling that halted the original election in November following his first-round win.
“His candidacy does not meet the conditions provided by law, as established by the Constitutional Court in December 2024,” the CEB said.
“Consequently, at the resumption of the electoral process, the members of the BEC consider that it is inadmissible to consider that the same person meets the conditions to accede to the Presidency of Romania.”
Georgescu, who is critical of NATO and opposes Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, filed his candidacy for the rerun, to be held on May 4, on March 7.
The CEB had 48 hours to accept or reject the application. Georgescu has 24 hours to appeal the CEB move, which prompted hundreds of his supporters who clashed with security forces in front of the Board’s headquarters in central Bucharest.
Pro-Georgescu demonstrators set fire to street furniture and heavy objects at police, who responded with tear gas, law enforcement officials said.
Georgescu and his supporters have claimed Romanian authorities are trying to block his candidacy in the rerun. He reacted angrily to the rejection, calling it “a direct blow to the heart of democracy.”
“I have one message left! If democracy in Romania falls, the entire democratic world will fall! This is just the beginning. It’s that simple!…Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!” he added in a social media post.
The first round of the presidential election was canceled by the Constitutional Court on December 6 after Romanian intelligence reports said foreign actors had manipulated social-media platforms, especially TikTok, to benefit Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian candidate.
The annulment of the vote has exacerbated deep divisions in Romanian politics and sparked international concern over the course of democracy in the European Union and NATO member.
Last month, US Vice-President JD Vance made thinly veiled criticism of the country’s moves against Georgescu, telling delegates at the Munich Security Conference that “if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”
Georgescu was a little-known figure in Romania until he unexpectedly won the first round of the presidential election on November 24 with about 22 percent of the vote.
The 62-year-old was to face pro-European centrist candidate Elena Lasconi in a runoff, which had been seen as a referendum on the future course of Romania.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who supported the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the election, said the authorities have the right to present the public with extremely solid evidence in the investigation, “which involves a potential candidate in the May elections.”
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on February 10 said he was resigning from his post amid an effort by the opposition to have him impeached after he stayed in power following the Constitutional Court’s election annulment.
Just days before the vote, Georgescu launched a TikTok campaign calling for an end to aid for Ukraine, apparently striking a chord with voters. He has also sounded a skeptical note on Romania’s NATO membership.
His anti-Western messaging is routinely amplified on Russian, state-run media and Kremlin-friendly social media.
His other stances included supporting Romanian farmers, reducing dependency on imports, and ramping up energy and food production.
19 comments
Comments are closed.
Previously, we had
1) EU authorities trampling popular decisions expressed in referenda (in the Netherlands, France, Ireland);
2) lobbying hard to overturn or prevent such popular decisions outside the EU (Icelandic referenda);
3) and national authorities ignoring the results of referenda before eliminating even the possibility of popular referenda (Netherlands).
All this took place from 2005 to 2018.
We have now reached a new stage: using every kind of blatantly dirty trick (fabricated accusations of foreign entanglement, detention on ground that an acquaintance committed unlawful acts, registration refusal because of vague criteria) to “cancel” candidates unwanted by European and national elites, but championed by voters (Romania). Previously, the German parliament had toyed with the idea of prohibiting the AfD from participating in elections.
And I would vote neither for Georgescu, nor for the AfD.
I believe that, in the medium term (around 2045), the next step will be to do like Vladimir Zelensky or Mahmoud Abbas: postpone elections indefinitely on the ground that “the conditions are not suitable for the serene conduct of electoral processes guaranteeing genuinely democratic outcomes”.
What and when the final phase of the dismantling of democracy in Europe will be, is written in the stars.
Indeed and the very people who are supposed to write these kinds of analyses and “warn” and “educate” of and about the “demise” of democracy are the very class that is unable to comprehend.
I have lived there more than 5 years before Iohannis´s first term. And from the people I met and knew there I must assume almost all are “abhorred” of Georgescu. A fascist monster. Why? Because they belong to the “elite”.
I don´t understand this incompetence and this inability to look beyond one´s own space. What are all the smart books good for? All the art galleries and exhibitions and fancy degrees. The avantgarde and the intelligentsia. Hollow and vain.
Reading Caragiale would make you understand…
Plus, there is a certain exacerbated, crass individualism leaning towards self-fulfilment (eating, drinking, fucking, having underlings licking your bum) that is too good to abandon once tasted.
As such, sending peasant children as a tribute to the Sublime Porte is nothing…
Still, it’s hard to believe current EU elites will be able to pull it off. Guys like Lenin or Mao were actually competent and good at what they were doing, they build the political and military apparatus and defeated their enemies. Ursula and her likes are just eating away last morsels of what her predecessors created, I don’t think the eurocrats are capable of mobilizing Red Army that can take on the Whites. IMHO the more pertinent question is who will take power after the eurocrats.
Look at the biographies of Lenin, Mao, or Stalin, Trotsky, etc, or, on the opposite side, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, or in the middle ground de Gaulle, Anthony Eden, Willy Brandt. They were no sissies, got battered during their life, even risked death.
Compare with the biographies of the current EU politicians — generally pampered lives, cosy careers, no life-threatening activities, no remarkable professional skills — Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen being prime examples of that breed.
This is also why I believe there is nothing to expect from the likes of Calin Georgescu, Alice Weidel, Giorgia Meloni & co, contrarily to what many voters hope(d). It is weak brew, all irresolute politicians without much competence beyond bureaucratic infighting — just like their apparatchik adversaries.
As long as there is no pressure for a natural selection of competent and resolute politicians, we are condemned to live with those we have.
Here’s an anodyne word of encouragement for you short essay. I hope this gets posted.
They will if the protests end up fizzling away, which could very likely happen. If it escalates and people die, it could be 50/50. As of now I give 90% chances for the corrupted elites (politicians, government, justice, military, etc…) to succeed.
Now, if it were to have forced conscription to send men to die on the Bloodlands, then I don’t know…
Use neutral language “The candidate does not meet the requirements as established by the constitutional court” to cancel democracy”. Requirements of course established “ad hoc” because all those geo-strategical reasons mentioned in the article.
This works very well because the majority of people do not pay any attention to such “technicalities”. If the Constitutional Court said so it must be so. They must know about this stuff.
And don’t forget Greece – the Troika also overruled a popular ‘no’ vote on an austerity package there: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/05/defying-troika-greece-chooses-democracy-over-fear-no-vote-austerity
And I have good longtime socialist friends in Europe–as here–who are completely gulled by all this, waving yellow and blue flags, ignoring or mostly ignoring Palestine. . . really upset and/or simply not computing when one tries to talk about the CIA, color revolutions, Clinton forward lies, a policy of encirclement of Russia. . . You can preface every every every comment by saying, ‘and OF COURSE this doesn’t justify invading people and killing them but we risk tens of thousands more dead in a war that Kiev cannot win as pretext for arming Europe as pretext for dismantling the European welfare state. . .’ Sleepy eyes, ears no longer working even halfway through the most concise speech you can summon of that kind. . . The contradictions overwhelm us even as our capacity for clear thought ebbs out between our ears.
It looks like the EU has imposed its own Warsaw Pact, the walls of which don’t become visible until you try to leave.
It does seem there is quite a bit of concern at the top. Normally maintaining the facade of democracy is quite important.
I read an article this morning in Fatto Quotidiano and do want to give credit to Georgescu’s main opponent, Elena Lasconi.
She said that the representative from her party on the board of elections voted in favor of retaining Georgescu’s candidacy. She also mentioned that the financial irregularities being blamed on him are covered in a note in his financial report — and was wondering why his explanation was being ignored.
All of which is to say that pressure is being put on Romanian authorities, who are only too compliant and likely too compromised by corruption to resist.
Is that you, Ursula?
Meanwhile, >
Musk wants to come to Italy to musksplain to President Sergio Mattarella why Italy has to have a contract for StarLink. This is going to get interesting. Considering that Mattarella’s brother Piersanti was assassinated when he was president of the Regional Government of Sicily, ostensibly by the mafia but with plenty of “intelligence community” connivance (including U.S. “intelligence”), I tend to doubt that Musk is much of an opponent for Sergio Mattarella.
If the USA withdraws … this is a mere footnote
I don’t think that it was all about that new NATO base. It’s about the sort of people that the globalists want in nominal charge of countries. They want people like Macron, Schulz, Trudeau in charge and do not want wildcards. Ideally they would like the security services to ‘vet’ candidate to see who is allowed to run and who is not and this has been muttered about in the US. It was the Georgian security services that claimed that it was the Russians which boosted Georgescu which turned out to be total bs as it was the ruling party that did so. Think of a strong leader from the past several decades and be assured that the globalists would never allow such people to be in charge ever again. The mask has well and truly dropped off here.
Yes, they loved Trudeau and they love Carney even more. The only policy recommendation he had in his acceptance speech last night, aside from “I love my parents” and “I love hockey” was to say he would reduce the capital gains tax on companies to “Get Canda Working Again ™” because they would create more jobs with that money. Pffffft.
Excuse me? Did I just step into a time machine? Ronnie Raygun, is that you? Are we in the 1980’s trickle down again? Tell me how this is different from Pierre Poilieve. This man is a menace. God help us all.
Carney is a self-agrandizing banker that has little merrit and as Col. Smithers was describing before, lots of stolen valour.
However, both Carney and Pollievre are pointing to the same direction, so they are different shades of the same dihareea.
It’s our very own frozen Kang or Kodos …
Comment on Mark S. Twitter post from 2023 with the drone boats. The clue is in the name of those drones: Magura, which is an absolutely Romanian word meaning rounded small hill, usually in a plain, surounded by water, and forested top… I don’t know if with hazelnut shrubs…