Romanian top court annuls presidential election result
Romanian top court annuls presidential election result
Hey Russian election interference is perfectly fine and perfectly legal.
-TrumpHaving polled in single digits before the first presidential election round on Nov. 24, Calin Georgescu - who wants to end Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion - surged to a victory that raised questions over how such a surprise had been possible
Romania's top security council on Wednesday said the country was a target of "aggressive hybrid Russian attacks" during the election period.
The electoral process to elect Romania's president will be fully re-run,
It's a gutsy move, but I think it's a good call.
The court’s decision follows dramatic revelations of alleged foreign influence on the contest. Earlier this week, the Romanian government declassified intelligence files that strongly suggested to a Russian-backed campaign to corrupt the election.
The documents said 25,000 pro-Georgescu accounts on social media app TikTok burst into action just two weeks before the first-round vote.
Yep I think the move is harsh. But this is literally happening in every other democracy and they are just pretending it isn’t. Kudos to romania for tackling the issue head-on.
Kudos to romania for tackling the issue head-on.
Exactly, accepting Russian propaganda needs to stop. Russian propaganda must be as illegal as Nazism is in most countries.
I am not so sure about this.
The people who made their opinion based on tiktok will be pissed off. The article mentions no proof of rigging or other direct interference with the voting process itself. This is a huge problem for democracy, if the image is that only the candidates approved by the court are allowed to be elected and unfavorable election results get annulled. And Russia will play this angle heavily.
Unless there is specific evidence of the voting process itself being rigged, this sounds like a recipe for disaster. Then Russia could even get a civil war in an EU country out of it rather than just a pro-Russian candidate winning.
The fact that they're re-running the election rather than just handing it to the #2 candidate should alleviate a lot of these concerns. If after a second run through with full information available and the foreign influence networks suppressed the population still genuinely seems to want the Russian asset in charge then I guess at that point you have to sigh and give it to them.
Unless there is specific evidence of the voting process itself being rigged, this sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I disagree, if Russia has made massive manipulative propaganda based on lies, that needs to be addressed. An election should not be based on lies. Especially not outside propaganda.
By that standard, the 2016 presidential election in USA was also based on much Russian propaganda, but the Americans didn't have the balls to call it out directly.
And now they have elected a fraudulent criminal for president. In my country, the parliament would without a doubt deem Trump unfit to serve.
In this situation it is USA that is a dysfunctional democracy, and not Romania.The people who made their opinion based on tiktok will be pissed off.
You know there are very specific rules about campaigning for an election.
Allegedly Georgescu's campaign disclosed zero expenses, yet it was obvious there was a campaign that advertised him with thousands accounts on ticktock.Obviously you shouldn't be allowed to break campaign rules just because you are a foreign intelligence service sabotaging an election.
Notice that things like the shitty Super-packs in USA are ALSO illegal in EU.
In EU there is regulation where major interest parties need to be declared. And at least 1 such entity was operating illegally on behalf of Georgescu.So it seems to me, the legal side of the decision is pretty clear.
For how long do we keep pretending to live in peace? Yes, there are no rockets flying from Russia (yet). But undermining political institutions is not less dangerous than a rocket.
And it's been happening for basically 3 decades now.
Absolutely.
There's a pretty strong sentiment in EU that we are in fact in a hybrid war with Russia now.
So maybe we are finally reaching a point where we stop pretending?
EU Countries that don't do much to help Ukraine, are not doing their Due diligence.
As far as I understood, Georgescu declared zero campaign expenses and then had thousands of accounts advertising him, primarily on Telegram and TikTok (side note: who the hell does politics on TikTok?). propelling him to the run-off election.
That does sound a bit fishy indeed.
I'm not the Romanian supreme court, but if they had a look at the disclosed intel, and decided a foreign state was messing with their elections, it is within their rights to invalidate and rerun the process. A re-run is frustrating, but getting tricked is even more frustrating.
Putin will be disappointed.
Good.
As long as he doesn't get angry, because he is sooo Scaaary. 😱
/s