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The far-right, Moscow-friendly candidate rose dramatically in the polls to lead the first round of presidential elections, which now risk annulment.
Romania’s Constitutional Court will debate on Thursday whether to annul the first round of presidential elections, in which relatively unknown, TikTok-famous candidate Călin Georgescu beat several well-established candidates with 23% of the vote. Two candidates who lost in the first round, Christian Terheș and Sebastian Popescu, have filed complaints, with Popescu alleging Georgescu misled the electorate and received support from outside the country to bolster his campaign. Terheș said that the withdrawal of another candidate just before the election confused voters and could amount to election fraud, according to local media. Romania’s top court is set to debate their requests to annul the results of the presidential election’s first round, although it is unclear if Georgescu risks being removed from the race altogether. Georgescu hasn’t commented directly on the complaints against him but said previously he had no campaign budget and was helped through volunteers. The former sustainable development expert was polling at just below 5% a day before the vote was held on Sunday but topped the ballot in a result that has stunned Romania’s political establishment. Georgescu has been critical of Romania’s NATO membership and suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of the world’s remaining true leaders. The candidate, who is set to run against pro-EU centrist Elena Lasconi in the election’s second round on 8 December, has also called for an end to the war in Ukraine and described two Romanian World War II Nazi collaborationist leaders as “heroes”.TikTok phenomenonThe 62-year-old built up a successful campaign through the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, where he posts videos of him attending church, running, and speaking on podcasts. Such was his success on the app that the deputy head of the country’s telecoms regulator, ANCOM, has requested the suspension of TikTok in Romania from Thursday amid fears that his campaign was boosted through bots sharing his posts. Georgescu’s popularity exploded in recent weeks, gaining 52 million views days before the vote’s first round. Pavel Popescu, the vice-president of ANCOM, said he requested the app’s suspension until “the completion of the investigation by the state institutions regarding the manipulation of the electoral process,” according to Profit news site.Romania’s National Audiovisual Council has also asked the European Commission to open a formal probe into the role of the app in the elections. TikTok has dismissed the allegations, arguing it enforces its community guidelines “aggressively.”Protests have erupted in Romania in response to Georgescu’s victory, with thousands of young Romanians protesting against the result in Bucharest on Tuesday. His opponent in the election’s second round, Elena Lasconi, said on Monday, “Let us be very clear, Calin Georgescu is an open admirer of Vladimir Putin. He is open against NATO and the European Union … He is for Romania’s isolation, which he calls neutrality … And without NATO we are at the mercy of Russia.”Georgescu has denied criticism lobbied against him that he is an extremist, saying, “We remain directly linked to European values, but we must find our (own) values,” adding that he was not a “fascist.”Additional sources • AP
