By Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST (Reuters) -Romania’s top court annulled an ongoing presidential election after accusations of Russian meddling and ruled on Friday the entire process, which had been due to conclude this weekend, would have to be re-run.
The second round had been scheduled for Sunday and voting has already begun in polling stations abroad. It would have pitted Calin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian candidate, against pro-European Union centrist leader Elena Lasconi.
“The electoral process to elect Romania’s president will be fully re-run, and the government will set a new date and … calendar for the necessary steps,” the court said in a statement.
Georgescu scored single-digit numbers in opinion polls before the first round vote on Nov. 24 but then surged to a first-place finish that raised questions over the result.
Georgescu wants to end Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. If he won the presidency, it would upend the pro-Western politics of the EU and NATO member, pushing Romania closer to a belt of states in central and eastern Europe that have powerful populist, Russia-friendly politicians, including Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.
Friday’s court ruling plunged the country into institutional chaos.
Current President Klaus Iohannis’s term ends on Dec. 21, but he said in a televised address that he would stay in his post until a successor is elected, meaning he will nominate a prime minister following a Dec. 1 parliamentary ballot.
Analysts said the court ruling may erode institutions, trigger street protests and ultimately still endanger the nation’s pro-Western course. It was not yet clear if Georgescu would be allowed to take part in the re-run election.
“(The ruling) shows the weaknesses of the Romanian state, the vulnerabilities of institutions that were not able to identify early on in the process the Russian interference,” said Laura Stefan, a legal expert at think tank Expert Forum.
Romania’s top security council declassified documents on Wednesday that said the country was a target of “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks” during the election period.
Russia has denied any interference in Romania’s election campaigns.
The top court, which had validated the first presidential round on Monday, said in its Friday reversal that the declassified documents showed the entire electoral process had been spoiled through vote manipulation, campaign irregularities and non-transparent funding.
In a statement to television station Realitatea, Georgescu called the court ruling an “official coup,” evidence of what he said was a corrupt system showing its face.
Lasconi condemned the court’s ruling. “The constitutional court’s decision is illegal, amoral and crushes the very essence of democracy, voting,” she said.
However, Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu supported the move, calling it “the only correct solution”.
INVESTIGATING CAMPAIGN
Romania’s anti-organised crime prosecuting unit DIICOT said it was launching an investigation into Georgescu’s campaign after analysing the declassified documents.
Sunday’s run-off vote would have been the third consecutive ballot after the first presidential round and the parliamentary election in which far-right parties gained a third of seats, though the ruling Social Democrats emerged as the largest grouping and hope to cobble together a pro-EU coalition government.
The parliamentary vote was unaffected by Friday’s court ruling. The incoming government will have the task of setting the new schedule for presidential elections, Iohannis said.
In one of the declassified documents, Romania’s intelligence agency said Georgescu was massively promoted on social media platform TikTok through coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid promotion. Georgescu has declared zero funds spent in the campaign.
TikTok denies giving Georgescu special treatment, saying his account was labelled as a political account and treated like any other.
The intelligence service also said login data for official Romanian election websites was published on Russian cybercrime platforms. It added that it had identified more than 85,000 cyberattacks that aimed to exploit system vulnerabilities.
Some experts predicted Georgescu would be barred from running again.
“It is extremely likely that the court will not allow Calin Georgescu to run again,” said Sergiu Miscoiu, a political science professor at Babes-Bolyai University.
In October, the court banned ultra-nationalist party leader and European Parliament member Diana Sosoaca from running for president in a move that analysts said overstepped court powers.
“There will be street protests. People will become radicalised and depending on which candidate from the radical right remains in the race, people will rally around him,” said Miscoiu.
Romania’s hard-currency bonds rose following the ruling. Dollar-denominated issues enjoyed the biggest gains, with the 2048 bond rising 0.7 cents to be bid at 81.15 cents on the dollar, its strongest level since mid-November, Tradeweb data showed.
The court’s decision “has been followed by a positive reaction in Romania’s financial markets, presumably reflecting investors pricing out the risk of a deterioration in relations with the EU and NATO,” Capital Economics said.
“Taking a step back, though, we still think there’s plenty to be concerned about, which suggests that the relief rally will prove fleeting.”
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Additional reporting by Hakan Ersen, Karin Strohecker and Barbara Erling; Writing by Alan Charlish and Luiza Ilie; Editing by Gareth Jones, Alex Richardson, Frances Kerry and Bill Berkrot)
