The first round of presidential elections in Romania that took place on the 24th of November had a shocking result: an independent ultranationalist candidate – Calin Georgescu – with a campaign solely on TikTok and YouTube won the majority of votes. The independent candidate had no party backing him and none of the pre-election polls picked up on his popularity, raising questions of potential electoral manipulation via social media.
On the 4th of December, the Romania security council declassified documents that claimed the country has been targeted by an “aggressive hybrid Russian action” during the recent election campaign, favouring Calin Georgescu. On the 6th of December, in response to the declassified documents the Romania’s constitutional court annulled the country’s presidential elections with the government having up to 90 days to organise new elections.
Despite these events, it is still important to analyse Calin Georgescu’s rise. Calin Georgescu’s first-round victory triggered shockwaves within the country and within the European Union as well as on the international scale. His critical views concerning the European Union and NATO could jeopardise Romania’s support for Ukraine. Romania plays a strategic role as it shares a 650-kilometre border with Ukraine and hosts a NATO base. Furthermore, his relations with Russia have been called into question after he praised Vladimir Putin as “a man who loves his country” in an interview in May 2018.
Moreover, the candidate on the 28th of November has promised to invite the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Romania if he becomes president. This would be against international law as the International Criminal Court has sent an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. Lastly, Romania's top security council declassified documents on the 4th of December outlining a possible external state interference in the country's first round of presidential elections. One document reveals that Calin Georgescu received extensive promotion on the social media platform TikTok through coordinated accounts and paid advertisements.
Calin Georgescu portrays himself as the saviour of the country and pushes people to vote for him using populist, anti-system, religious and ultranationalist narratives. He points to many of the different problems Romanians face, such as high levels of poverty, poor levels of education, mismanagement of natural resources and how many people had to leave Romania due to little opportunities. He argues that the Romanian people need a saviour, and he is responding to the call.
However, the solutions offered to these problems and frustrations of the Romanian people are conspirative and based on misinformation and at times rooted in pseudo-scientific answers. Examples of these are the speculations of nanochips found in juice boxes, that Ukrainian children are helped by the Romanian government far more than Romanian children, that NATO wants to push Romania into a war with Ukraine and that climate change is not rooted in human action. The question that is in the minds of both Romanians and Europeans, is how a candidate that has controversial and conspirative ideas has entered the presidential race. In order to answer this question, it is important to analyse why Romanians are disappointed with the political and economic system in the country that has propelled voters to choose Calin Georgescu.
The economic situation post-2008 crisis led to dissatisfaction with centre-left and centre right-parties
After the fall of communism in December 1989, Romania followed a gradual change in terms of economic reforms and market opening. The beginning of the transition was gradual and not immediate compared to the other countries in the Eastern Bloc who experienced “shock therapy”. However, after the 2008 crisis, a decision was agreed with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to implement neoliberal economic policies at a faster pace than before. Neoliberal economic policies purport that the state should limit its intervention in the economy to promoting market openness, privatising public sectors and introducing labour market flexibility. Essentially neoliberalism argues for little state intervention, increase of privatisation and financialisation and deregulation of market and trade. Market-friendly explanations argue that economic growth through market mechanisms will help develop societies as a whole.
Despite these promising avenues of neoliberal economic policies, in Romania like in many other countries, these structural changes, have increased inequality and economic polarisation and have led to the decline of state authority as well as a decrease of investment in social welfare. While Romania experienced economic growth in the past decade, a report done by SDG Watch Europe, finds that 1/3 Romanians are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, while the income of the top 20% of the population exceeds by 6.5 times the incomes of the bottom 20%. Moreover, poverty and social exclusion are more than twice as high in rural areas compared to the cities. The gender pay gap is at 3.5%, the lowest in the European Union while in terms of education, dropout rates are one of the highest in the European Union with over 15% in 2021 and with 41% of Romanian students functionally illiterate in grades 1 to 8.
The problem essentially lies that although neoliberal policies have driven economic growth, the distribution of the gains is highly unequal resulting in a high number of people losing out from neoliberalism. In addition, due the decrease role of the state and a decline of investment in social welfare, many of the losers of neoliberalism have been left will little support. The education system, the health care system and the social reproductive structure of the economy are severely underfunded in Romania. Total welfare state expenditures in Romania are below 15% of GDP while the European average is 28% of GDP according to a report done in 2020 by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
All of these elements have increased dissatisfaction and distrust with the government. Frustration with the government have left many people angry with either the centre-right or the centre-left parties. Many Romanians feel abandoned by the centre-left or the centre-right parties and have turned to populist far-right parties, such as AUR, S.O.S. Romania and the newly formed party POT that appeal to their voters with cultural, nationalistic and religious agendas that distracts them from their economic interests.
Calin Georgescu’s campaign on TikTok has pointed to these problems that many Romanians face however he does not root them in neoliberalist policies used by the Romanian state but argues that it is Western, and NATO imposed. Using populist, religious, anti-system and ultranationalist narratives he portrays himself as the sole saviour of the people. Due to the rising frustrations with the state and the lack of investment in social welfare, many people were able to relate to Calin Georgescu’s speeches.
Other elements that facilitated Calin Georgescu’s rise
It is important to note that there have been other elements that have driven many Romanians to vote for Calin Georgescu. In this analysis I will go through the rise of corruption, his campaign on TikTok, and the rise of conspiracy theories in Romania.
Firstly, in terms of corruption, in 2023, Romania has been ranked 63rd in the world with a score of 46 points by the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). CPI is the most widely used global corruption ranking system with a scale of 0-100 points, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean. The CPI looks at how corrupt the public sector is perceived, by looking at different manifestations of the public sector such as: diversion of public funds, use of bribery in the public sector and state capture by narrow vested interests among many others.
For comparison, the average in the EU is 64 points according to the CPI, which puts Romania in the bottom 3 within the EU. In addition, according to the Global Corruption Barometer done by the EU in 2021, Romania ranks first within the EU when it comes to bribery offered in public services. Two possible inferences can be made. Firstly, political institutions are perceived to have some level of corruption increasing mistrust in the governing system as a whole. Secondly, there is a perception that bribery is necessary to some extent to access public services, such as healthcare. This further marginalises people from making use of public services. Therefore, many people have been able to further relate to Calin Georgescu’s arguments of anti-system, as he is an independent candidate unaffiliated with any party.
Secondly, it is important to look at the spread of conspiracy theories in Romania. The Euro-Atlantic Resilience Centre produced a report in 2022 where it concluded that “Romanians have internalised global conspiracist narratives (...) and erroneous information have prevailed over arguments presented by the scientific community or by authorities”. Conspiracy theories popular on the internet are that there are nanochips found juice boxes, that climate change is a hoax invented to cut away at Romania’s sovereignty and false narratives arguing that the EU and NATO have been stealing Romania’s resources turning it into a “colony”.
All of these statements have been made either by Calin Georgescu or by the members of the other far-right parties that have gotten seats in government. EU DISINFO Lab has argued in their report in 2023 that recent crises such as COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, economic inequality and lack of critical education in schools have intensified these narratives. Therefore, one main result of the spread of conspiracy theories is that many people do not trust the state system and any decisions taken by political institutions are viewed in a way that only reinforces their beliefs further.
Lastly, it is important to critically examine Calin Georgescu’s TikTok campaign. Declassified documents by Romania’s security council on the 4th of December, claimed the country has been targeted by an “aggressive hybrid Russian action” during the recent election campaign, favouring Calin Georgescu. The documents have shown that Calin Georgescu’s TikTok campaign has been used to manipulate political views through different methods such as coordinating accounts, manipulating algorithms and paid promotions. Although Calin Georgescu has claimed that no money has gone into his electoral campaign, Romania’s intelligence services hinted at large sums of money that made his TikTok campaign successful.
Russia has denied any interference in Romania’s elections. Georgescu dismissed the declassified documents claiming that they are an avenue of the “system” to disregard his campaign and that it is essentially “propaganda”. Two conclusions can be drawn from this. Although the documents do not directly state that Russia manipulated elections in Romania, they strongly suggest it calling into question how democratic the electoral process has been. Secondly, the electoral manipulation on TikTok has favoured Calin Georgescu, and in violation of the Romanian election law, the content was still made available and publicised during the election day. In response to these concerns, the constitutional court of Romania annulled the results calling for the presidential election to be resumed in its entirety.
Future prospects
The decision on the 6th of December to annul the results and redo the whole process of presidential elections is unprecedented in Romania. The court's decision to annul the election results was based on the declassified reports from the Romanian intelligence services, which revealed possible interference by a foreign state in influencing voters through anti-Western propaganda favouring Călin Georgescu. This decision has been both praised and criticised. The centre-left social democrat party’s candidate Marcel Ciolacu has hailed the decision arguing that it is the only correct solution. Other Romanian politicians, like Elena Lasconi, who was supposed to run against Calin Georgescu in the second round of elections has called the decision “illegal, immoral and crushes the very essence of democracy”. Calin Georgescu has also argued that the decision is undemocratic.
This decision allows the Romanian institutions to conduct further investigations of the electoral process and determine ways of shielding the future election from further foreign intervention. This is essential in democratic elections. In addition, it also raises concerns at the European level on how to shield citizens from foreign manipulations. It is important to note that despite this decision the Romanian society is still left questioning and frustrated with the democratic political institutions of the country. This decision has further consolidated the views of the people that had already little trust in the electoral process.
Most importantly the Romanian society remains highly unequal in terms of pay, education and opportunities, and overwhelmingly has lost trust in political institutions. The events that unfolded in Romania over the past month should serve as an eye-opener. The Romanian people need an increase of investment in social welfare, an increase in spending on education and health care, a progressive taxation system, a strong stance against corruption and an increase of support for those have been marginalised in the economic system. Without actual support for the people who have lost from neoliberal policies, the rise of far-right candidates or parties will continue.
Source: Alexandra Dumitrescu is a Research Associate at LINKS Europe and commonspace.eu.
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