A top court in Romania has called for a recount of 9.4 million ballots in the nation's presidential election after a right-wing outsider won the first round in a shocking upset.
The victory of Călin Georgescu has sent panic through Romania's political establishment, which has cast him as an authoritarian with Russian sympathies. Romania is a NATO member and borders Ukraine.
The Constitutional Court of Romania ordered the recount Thursday after complaints of fraud from one of the candidates, Cristian Terhes, who received 1% of the vote.
The second-place candidate, Elena Lasconi, criticized the court's intervention as a troubling and undemocratic move.
Lasconi was set to face Georgescu in a runoff on December 8, but the recount has thrown the election into turmoil.
“Extremism is fought by voting, not backstage games,” she said, adding that what the court “is trying to do now is absolutely horrific for a democratic country.”
Georgescu's stunning victory was powered by TikTok, where the previously obscure figure generated a massive, viral following.
Romanian national security officials have cast his victory as illegitimate, alleging he benefited from a pro-Russian covert influence operation meant to destabilize NATO.
“Romania, along with other states on NATO’s Eastern Flank, has become a priority for the hostile actions of some state and nonstate actors,” the Supreme Council of National Defense, which oversees national security, said.
The perplexity that Georgescu's critics have expressed over his victory may help explain why he won. While they claim his TikTok influence is fake or part of a Russian plot, it's also possible that they simply did not anticipate the level of dissatisfaction voters felt towards the political establishment.
Georgescu's TikTok messaging focused on ending the war in Ukraine and keeping Romania out of the conflict, sentiments that have been shared by U.S. politicians like President-elect Donald Trump, who has been baselessly accused of working for Russia.
While TikTok was central to Georgescu's stunning upset, the company has denied giving preferential treatment to any candidate, saying Georgescu's account was labeled "the same way as every other candidate on TikTok, and subject to exactly the same rules and restrictions.”
Certainly, the crisis in Romania will seem familiar to many in the United States, where Democrats sought unsuccessfully to jail Trump and keep him off the ballot in the name of "democracy."
“They want to ban the right of the Romanian people to speak freely,” Georgescu told a local news channel Wednesday, adding the result “was perfectly democratic and legitimate.”
