Mass Protests Continue in Romania Against Pro-Russian Presidential Candidate Georgescu

Thousands of people, mostly students, have protested in various cities across Romania against far-right politician Calin Georgescu, who won the first round of the presidential election, the Romanian media outlet Digi24 reports.

The protesters gathered in Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, Iași, Craiova, Sibiu, and Brasov. They spoke out in favour of democracy, NATO and the European Union, and against extremism, holding placards reading ‘We are not repeating history. We want democracy’, “Democracy, not theft!”, and urging not to vote “for a dictator”. Most of the protesters are young people and students.

The 62-year-old Georgescu, an agricultural engineer by training, is formally non-partisan, but in recent years has been active in far-right circles, a member of the far-right nationalist Alliance for the Unification of Romanians (AUR). In the past, he has actively spread Orthodox fundamentalist, right-wing extremist, anti-Western and pro-Russian views and conspiracy theories in his publications and statements.

His victory with 22.9 per cent of the vote came as a surprise to his rivals and the public, as opinion polls before the election had predicted he would win only four to seven per cent. He campaigned mainly on the social media platform TikTok. His video clips received hundreds of thousands of shares. 

The second place in the voting went to Elena Lasconi, a candidate from the liberal party ‘Union for the Salvation of Romania’ (USR) (19.7%), who beat the current Prime Minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu (19.5%), by only 2000 votes. In fourth place was the far-right candidate from the AUR party, Gheorghe Simion, with almost 14 per cent of the vote, whom sociologists expected to make it to the second round of the election.

Meanwhile, Romania's National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting is asking the European Commission to launch an official investigation into the TikTok platform and its possible improper use in the election campaign of the hitherto little-known Georgescu.

The deputy head of the agency, Valentin Alexandru Șucan, noted ‘suspicions of manipulation of public opinion among young people through the improper use of the TikTok platform and a lack of transparency in the management of political content’. He believes that TikTok had a significant impact on the results of the first round, as the platform actively promoted election content, ‘without proper labelling’ and ‘using special hashtags, which attracted millions of views’.

The European Commission is being called upon to launch an investigation into TikTok's compliance with the Digital Services Act, especially in terms of algorithmic transparency and systemic risks.

As The Gaze previously reported, Romania's current Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu announced his resignation as party leader after a crushing defeat in the first round of the presidential election. Shortly afterwards, the entire party leadership resigned.