The atmosphere in Romania in the runup to the first round of the presidential election does not suggest that these are momentous times for the country. Indeed, the general mood is more one of widespread weariness.
Nevertheless, Romania is at a crossroads.
Sunday’s poll — a rerun of the election that was annulled last December after the first round — will be one of the most important elections in Romania since the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s.
The president of Romania does not have many domestic powers, but does have a degree of foreign policy authority and is an influential figure in the country.
Now, for the first time since the overthrow of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989, a right-wing extremist in the form of former football hooligan George Simion is frontrunner.
His closest rival in the polls, Crin Antonescu, represents the decades-long misery of post-Communist Romanian democracy.
Why is the election so important?
Romania is the most populous country in southeast Europe and the most important EU and NATO member in the region.
It is experiencing the war in Ukraine more immediately than any other EU member state: not only because it shares the EU’s longest national border with Ukraine, but also because rockets regularly fly over its territory, Shahed drones have crashed in the Danube Delta, and it faces frequent Russian provocations in the Black Sea.
In view of all this, only one thing is certain in this election: Regardless of the outcome, Romania faces a highly insecure and difficult future.
Who won the annulled election last year?
It seems partly coincidental and partly inevitable that the field of candidates in the election is the way it is.
Last November, Calin Georgescu shocked the world by winning the first round of the presidential election. Georgescu is an esoteric, a conspiracy theorist, a pro-Russian right-wing extremist and an apologist for the Orthodox Christian fascist Iron Guard movement of the interwar years.
One important reason for his victory was that he made clever use of social media — especially TikTok — in a society that has largely decoupled itself from traditional media.
A more profound reason for his success was, however, the frustration within Romanian society about the state of the country.
Romania: a ‘simulated democracy’
Democracy in Romania is largely a simulated one without content.
For decades, the country has been dominated by clientelistic political cliques that divide up resources between them, control the judiciary and other state institutions, and prevent any form of responsible, future-oriented, sustainable governance.
These include the post-communist Social Democratic Party (PSD). In contrast to what its name suggests, the PSD generally adopts nationalist, traditionalist positions.
Then there is the National Liberal Party (PNL), which has next to nothing in common with political and economic liberalism in its classic form, and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), which has degenerated into a pro-Viktor Orban party in Romania.
These three parties have been ruling the country in various different constellations for quite some time and even formed a three-party coalition after the parliamentary election last December.
Georgescu excluded from the rerun
After Georgescu won the first round of last November’s presidential election, the Constitutional Court annulled the election on the grounds of illegal election campaign financing and foreign interference in the election in Georgescu’s favor.
The suspicion was that Russia had meddled in the election. So far, however, only the crime of illegal campaign financing has been proven.
In March, Georgescu was barred from running in Sunday’s rerun.
Who is the frontrunner?
The frontrunner is now George Simion, Romania’s best-known right-wing extremist.
Thirty-eight-year-old Simion began his political career among Bucharest’s football hooligans, later hitting the headlines for acts of violence targeting Romania’s Hungarian minority and for founding in 2019 the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party.
The AUR would like to see a Greater Romania that would include the Republic of Moldova and parts of Ukraine.
It came second in last November’s parliamentary election, garnering about 18% of the vote. Together with two other parties, the extreme right-wing accounts for about 35% of all seats in parliament.
Connections to Russia?
Simion has made headlines in recent years for acts of extreme aggression and violence in parliament.
In February 2022, he physically attacked a minister at the lectern. In December 2023, he shouted “I’ll sexually assault you, b***!” at a female former member of his party in the parliament chamber.
In his TikTok and Facebook videos, he generally uses the typically violent language of Romanian street criminals.
Simion is suspected of having links to the Russian secret service FSB and Russian ultra nationalists, including far-right Russian philosopher and Eurasianist fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin.
He is banned from entering Moldova and Ukraine.
To make himself more palatable to a wider electorate, Simion has toned down his rhetoric considerably during this campaign. He has positioned himself as a Trump supporter and “savior of Romanian democracy.”
Most polls suggest Simion will get well over 30% of the vote. That being said, opinion polls in Romania are unreliable because they are often used as means of political propaganda and many polling institutes are not independent.
Return to the political stage
Crin Antonescu (65), former member of the National Liberal Party, and Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan (55) are neck-and-neck behind Simion, with most polls giving Antonescu the edge over Dan.
Antonescu is the joint candidate of the ruling three-party coalition of PSD, PNL and UDMR.
Several Romanian media ironically refer to him as the “man from the past who wants to bring Romania forward,” alluding to the name of his electoral alliance “Romania Forward.” Nevertheless, Antonescu represents above all a past characterized by clientelism and corruption.
The softly spoken mayor of Bucharest
The one candidate who really could bring Romania forward is Nicusor Dan, the mayor of Bucharest. Dan is a progressive liberal independent candidate, who made a name for himself as an activist who fought against the Bucharest real estate mafia and co-founded the green-liberal protest party Save Romania Union (USR).
Dan is a mathematician and is seen as honest, not corrupt, but also not hugely successful in his role as mayor of the capital because he stands alone against a powerful system. Unlike Antonescu, he is in favor of unconditional support for Ukraine.
Dan speaks quietly, calmly and is seen as a level-headed, rational, conflict-averse politician who approaches problems analytically and seeks long-term solutions. He is considered to be a man of the people and actively seeks contact with citizens.
Liberal candidate Elena Lasconi is not seen as having a chance in Sunday’s election even though she surprisingly came second in the annulled first round of the election last November. She has since lost the support of her party, the USR, which now backs Nicusor Dan.
It is unlikely that a president will be elected directly on Sunday because none of the candidates is expected to get the absolute majority that would require.
The runoff election is scheduled to take place on May 18.
This article was originally published in German.
