So yesterday the first round of the presidential election took place in our country (2 rounds in total, next one on 8 Dec). Everyone was expecting something but no one expected what ended up happening: an independent candidate who was virtually unknown as recent as 2 weeks ago, Călin Georgescu, won 1st place. For reference: it’s as if an unknown third party candidate won the US presidential election against Kamala and Trump. Călin beat even Marcel Ciolacu, current prime minister and part of PSD, the party which has dominated Romania since the fall of communist (1989).
What do you think is going to happen policy-wise? To what extent will he have to compromise or work with other existing powers to enact their agenda?
I believe this is the worst case scenario that could’ve happened. This Călin guy is an extremist far-right, anti UE & NATO, pro-Russia politician. He has 2 criminal cases for glorifying / excusing the genocide Ion Antonescu (Nazi WW2 leader) committed in Romania & saying Ion & another far-right figure (legionnaire, fascist) - Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, are martyrs / national heroes. He came out of absolutely nowhere and many Romanians haven’t even heard of him before yesterday. He didn’t have any posters, ads, didn’t go on podcasts, TV shows, etc. to campaign; he only campaigned on Tiktok, which in my opinion was 100% funded by Russia and he is a puppet (Telegram groups were exposed where people shared videos to spam on Tiktok), full of bots. Thankfully the fight is not fully lost yet as he’s facing Elena Lasconi on 8 Dec, think of it as Trump vs Kamala… Elena’s chances fully depend on her ability to mobilize the other major parties to support her - share their electorate with her. Policy wise it’d be a nightmare if this guy got in. On 1 Dec we have parliamentary elections and there’s a high chance that AUR (far right political party - Calin’s former party until he got kicked out for being too extreme even for them) will get a lot of seats, so with both a far right president and parliament, it’s very bad… thankfully I don’t think the other major parties will let this happen, this guy is the embodiment of the “anti system candidate” and they won’t let their status quo power go away just like that.