The Romanian court annuls the result of the first round of the presidential election

Romania’s Constitutional Court has annulled the result of the first round of the presidential election just days before the second round.

It means the process will start from scratch, and the government will have to decide on a date for a new vote.

The first round was won by Calin Georgescu, an almost unknown far-right skeptic who has previously praised Vladimir Putin.

The court’s decision comes after intelligence documents were declassified, suggesting that Georgescu benefited from a massive influence operation, carried out from abroad, to interfere with the outcome of the vote.

Hours after the court’s decision, Georgescu told a Romanian television station that the country’s democracy was “under attack”, calling the verdict a “formalized coup”.

He said he would “move forward in the voting process,” implying that he would try to run for president again.

Outgoing Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said the court’s decision to annul was “the only correct solution after the declassification of documents … which show that the result of Romanians’ vote was blatantly distorted as a result of Russia’s intervention”.

In a speech on Friday evening, current president Klaus Iohannis confirmed that he would remain in office until a new president is elected.

He said Romania was a stable, secure and solid country, a country that remained securely and solidly pro-European and a NATO ally.

The court’s judges met on Friday morning, despite announcing the night before that they would not discuss new information about possible outside influence in the election until the second round of voting.

The law states that, in the event of annulment of the elections, they should resume on the second Sunday following the date of the annulment – which would have meant December 22nd.

However, the court has decided to ask the government to redo the entire electoral process and therefore the election campaign.

Last week, the court had ordered a recount of the votes cast in Sunday’s first round following allegations that the social media platform TikTok gave “preferential treatment” to surprise winner Calin Georgescu.

Georgescu, a radical without a party of his own, campaigned primarily on TikTok. The platform said it was “categorically false to claim that his account was treated differently from any other candidate”.

He won 23% of the vote, with 19% for the runner-up, Elena Lasconi, of the opposition Unió Salva Romania and Ciolacu of the social democrats in the government in third place.

Lasconi condemned the court ruling as “illegal” and “immoral”, saying that “today is the moment when the Romanian state has trampled on democracy”.

“Like it or not, from a legal and legitimate point of view, nine million Romanian citizens, both in the country and in the diaspora, have expressed their preference for a certain candidate. We cannot ignore their will!” she said

He was hoping to win the second round on Sunday, which has now been cancelled.

The Constitutional Court also rejected lawsuits filed by two of the losing candidates who accused Georgescu of illegal campaign financing.

this week, Georgescu denied to the BBC that he was the man from Moscow.

He claimed that the political establishment could not cope with his success and was trying to block him.

The country is now in entirely new territory, politically. And no one is quite sure what will come next.