(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. No gusta el ganador, que lo cambien)
Electoral chaos in Romania. Some demand a recount. And others demand outright that the presidential elections be held again. They did not like the winner and they want another one. The Constitutional Court did not dare this Friday to annul, just like that, this first round of the presidential elections held on 24 November. It will wait until Monday to make a decision, because on Sunday there are the general elections, the parliamentary ones.
If they already feared a result not very friendly to Brussels in these elections as well, with a great result for the AUR party, a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, then by annulling the results of 24 November, tomorrow’s results, dictated by rage, could have been even more sinister for the left and the centrism. With a somewhat skillful recount, they may perhaps not manage to knock down the candidate Georgescu, but they may indeed get the center-right candidate Elena Lasconi to lose second place, and therefore the passage to the second round, in favor of the third-place finisher, who was none other than the humiliated socialist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu in these results. Had Lasconi and Ciolacu, Brussels’ candidates, won, there would be no recounts or doubts. This double standard, which is the trademark the European Union has imposed, is far more decisive than the identity and substance of the candidates themselves, supposedly or really ultra and supposedly or really pro-Russian.
A candidate has won, Calin Georgescu, who is not to the liking of those he has to please, of Brussels. They say he is an ultranationalist, an ultra-rightist, that he speaks well of Putin and ill of NATO. And that is why the alarms have gone off among all the politicians and parties in Bucharest, in the high command of the European Union in Brussels, and in all the right-thinking newsrooms of the West.
And quickly a recount has been demanded, when the indications of fraud are the same as in all the elections in Romania. The argument for disqualification is that Georgescu has made great use of TikTok and has had barely any campaign expenses — pure sore-loser excuses. In short, every recount is good. Now all the losers are demanding one for Romania. But let us recall that those who demanded them — Trump and the Republicans — in various American states in 2020 were branded dangerous coup-plotters who refused to recognize the result of the elections. Some went to prison.
In short, Calin Georgescu is not to their liking. And it is understandable. Although those who knew him before he was a candidate have experienced him as a fully Western and European Romanian, who represented his country as secretary general of the Romanian Association of the Club of Rome, worked in the UN Environment Committee in Vienna. He was “personality of the year for a European Romania” by the House of Europe Foundation, a purely Europeanist agency.
In his long professional career in agricultural consultancy, the environment, toxic waste and human rights in the West, representing various Romanian governments, Georghescu had never shown pro-Russian or pro-Putin leanings until he perceived the great opportunity that this electoral niche represented, on account of the Romanians’ resentment toward the Ukrainians and their frustrations with all the politicians tamed by Agenda 2030, the Green Pact and the impositions of an ever more ideologized and authoritarian European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen.
It is more than probable that Georgescu, if he prevails over all the operations that have been set in motion to try to neutralize him, will reveal himself less as a pro-Russian ultra than as a very shrewd candidate who has used, for his success, the weariness with the anti-national progressivism, the impositions of Brussels and the many thieves who parade about there with the blue flag of the European Union.
The truth is that the credibility of the forces protected by the European Commission is nil. And the double standard of progressives and liberaloids has bored all the electorates. Not only in the eastern Balkans. That is why Sunday’s parliamentary elections may be the next fright, and a difficult one to annul. And so too the chances of shoving out the winner of the first presidential round. The national forces, opposed to the social-democratic and centralist steamroller of the majority of People’s Party, Socialists and Greens in Brussels, do not and will not cease to grow, with more or less friendly faces and more or less elegant styles. But the only antidote to the national revolt is a total change of policy in Brussels. And that can be ruled out, given the obstinacy of von der Leyen and her coalition of People’s Party, Socialists and Greens.
Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.