Romania's election turmoil: vote recount sparks democracy fears
The winner of the first round of the presidential elections in Romania, anti-Western and far-right candidate Călin Georgescu, announced that state institutions are attempting to invalidate the choice of the citizens. The Constitutional Court has decided to recount the votes from the first round of elections.
The Romanian Constitutional Court decided on Thursday that a recount of the votes cast on Sunday in the first round of the presidential elections needs to be conducted. The far-right candidate Călin Georgescu received the most votes in the round.
The Constitutional Court stated in a notice that after examining the request of one of the candidates, Cristian Terheș, to annul the elections, it instructed the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) to recount the votes cast in the first round. BEC is to submit the results to the Constitutional Court for verification. The hearing is set for 9 AM (9 AM GMT) on Friday.
Annulment of elections?
At the same time, the court announced that it dismissed the request to annul the elections filed by another candidate, Sebastian Constantin Popescu.
Terheș, a candidate of the radical right who received about 1% of the votes in the first round, raised objections regarding the votes cast for Elena Lasconi, the leader of the centre-right party Union Save Romania (USR). Popescu's complaint concerned the voting for Georgescu, including possible violations in his TikTok campaign.
In the first round, the far-right independent candidate Georgescu, a previously little-known politician, took first place, while Lasconi came in second. The second round of elections will take place on 8th December.
The decision of the Constitutional Court, which according to commentators, could theoretically lead to the annulment of the first round, was criticised by numerous politicians and commentators, who called it an "unprecedented decision" and a "threat to democracy".
Lasconi argued that the court interferes with the "democratic process".
It seems that some people want to cling to power at all costs, even at the cost of democracy. I look at the last few days: on Monday, all political leaders seemed to have accepted the election results, even if some did not like them. Sunday was a day of voting, the cleanest in recent years. The result of the vote representing the result of the will of the Romanians – said Ionuț Moșteanu from USR.
He added that by Thursday, the Constitutional Court should have approved the results of the first round, and the campaign for the second should start on Friday.
"Playing with a lighter at a petrol station"
"What the Constitutional Court is doing at the moment seems to me like playing with a lighter at a petrol station and it is very risky for democracy because it has already exceeded the deadline from the election calendar, creating conditions for the elections to be deemed unconstitutional" – he added.
Kamil Całus, an analyst at the Polish Centre for Eastern Studies, said that the court's decision "will not take the first place from Georgescu, but it may lead to a change in the second position". He emphasised that the difference between Lasconi's result and the result of the third-place candidate, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), is only 2,740 votes.
- The decision to recount the votes has already been treated as political - noted Całus, reminding that the Romanian Constitutional Court is widely considered to be obedient to the PSD. - If it indeed results in a change in the second position, Romania may fall into protests on a scale similar to those from 2017-2019 - he assessed.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Bucharest at that time in protest against PSD's announced changes to the criminal code, which were set to remove penalties for certain corruption offences.
