Romanians on the march after arrest of presidential favourite

Tens of thousands of Romanians marched on Bucharest’s Victory Square, the seat of the Romanian government, at the weekend, after the presidential election favourite was taken in for questioning.

Calin Georgescu was picked up on his way to register as a candidate, and he was later charged with attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, as well as membership of a neo-fascist organisation.

“Georgescu’s mentality is the same as the mentality of Trump,” said Lavinia approvingly, as she steered her three-year-old daughter’s pushchair through a sea of Romanian tricolour flags.

“He will listen to our opinion, just as we listen to him. We came here today for freedom, and democracy.”

On the day of Georgescu’s arrest came an unexpected twist.

Guns, grenade launchers, and gold bullion buried beneath the floorboards were found in raids on 47 properties by Romanian police targeting a network, allegedly run by a former French legionnaire and militia chief in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Horatiu Potra’s current whereabouts are unknown, but his alleged links to Georgescu have only added to the intrigue.

While Horatiu Potra has admitted to illegal possession of weapons, Georgescu has denied all wrongdoing.

In just three months, Romania has gone from a stable and loyal member of the European Union and Nato, to a country where a far-right, pro-Russia figure has come from almost nowhere to become favourite for the presidency.

Georgescu led the first round of last December’s election, but the run-off vote was then annulled after Romanian intelligence revealed Russia had been involved in 800 TikTok accounts backing him.

The election is being rerun on 4 and 18 May.

For Georgescu’s critics, photographs of the weapons cache are the ultimate proof of his danger to the republic.

For his supporters, they’re the latest bout of mud-slinging, the doomed attempt of a corrupt regime to resist inevitable, Trump-inspired change.

At the roadside, a lone busker played the same tune over and over again on an electric piano, as a sea of protesters passed by.

“We are talking about the freedom to choose our own president,” said Oana Eftimie, vice-president of the Patriotic Party of Romanians, another right-wing grouping.

One of the peculiarities of the Calin Georgescu phenomenon, is that he seems to have reached beyond existing nationalist parties like AUR, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which won 18% and 63 seats in the House of Deputies in the Parliamentary elections on 1 December.

Some polls put him as high as 40%.

Georgescu has eclipsed both the firebrand AUR leader, George Simion, and the leader of SOS Romania, Diana Sosoaca.

Oana Eftimie dismisses the charges against Georgescu, and some of his backers, as reheated slanders:

“He was prosecuted for all that before, and the case was closed last year for lack of evidence. So he’s not a fascist, we’re not fascists, we’re just normal people wanting to be able to choose our leader, and exhausted with those that are in power now.”

In a quiet flat not far from the noisy marchers, Elena Calistru, president of Funky Citizens, a liberal-minded, non-governmental organisation, admits that the protesters’ anguish about a corrupt, complacent elite, has some basis in fact.

“But if you have a house and the roof is leaking. You don’t burn down the house. You fix the roof, right?

“Unfortunately for us though, the malaise that we see all over Europe, the lack of leadership, the lack of politicians capable of talking to the general public without trying to compete with the populists, is also present in Romania.”

As a loyal US ally, Romanian military analysts are holding their breath over the fate of substantial US military infrastructure in Romania, which includes 4,500 US personnel. “Dacian Spring”, a major Nato exercise scheduled for the spring, has been postponed until after the May elections.

Candidates have until 15 March to register their candidacy for the presidential elections. If the Romanian Constitutional Court rules that Georgescu cannot stand, because of the charges levelled against him, how will the Americans react?

US Vice-President JD Vance made an apparent criticism of Romania at the Munich Security Conference last month.

“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

“Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear”, added Vance.

Romanians on both sides of the political spectrum seem unconvinced.