BUCHAREST: Romanians on Sunday protested outside a voting station near Bucharest together with far-right presidential frontrunner Calin Georgescu after a top court scrapped the scheduled run-off vote after allegations of Russian interference.
Georgescu unexpectedly topped the first round of voting on November 24 in the NATO and EU member bordering Ukraine.
But the constitutional court on Friday unanimously decided to annul the entire electoral process as it was “marred... by multiple irregularities and violations of electoral legislation”.
The annulment followed a spate of intelligence documents declassified by the presidency this week detailing allegations against Georgescu and Russia, including claims of “massive” social media promotion and cyberattacks.
More than 100 people gathered at a polling station near Bucharest on Sunday — the originally scheduled date of the run-off vote — shouting “Down with dictatorship”, “We want to vote” and “Thieves”.
“I am here for democracy, because in my opinion it no longer exists,” Adriana Iaercau, a 60-year-old teacher, told AFP.
“We are with him (Georgescu) from the beginning. It was a democratic process. Everything was fine till Friday when they decided to kill the democracy that was brought (to) Romania in 1989” when Communism ended, said Sorin Scuratovschi, a 46-year-old account manager.
Georgescu accused the authorities to have cancelled the elections by fear he would win.
“I’m here in the name of democracy and always will be,” Georgescu told reporters outside the closed polling station.
Georgescu — who has called the cancellation “a formalised coup d’etat” — said he is contesting the vote cancellation in court, as is another far-right party, AUR, which has also called on its supporters to go to polling stations later Sunday.
On Saturday, police raided three houses in Brasov city in central Romania as part of the investigation “in connection with crimes of voter corruption, money laundering, computer forgery”.
Among the houses searched was that of businessman Bogdan Peschir, a TikTok user who according to the declassified documents allegedly paid $381,000 to those involved in the promotion of Georgescu, Romanian media reported.
Georgescu on Sunday said he did not know Peschir, who has compared his support for the 62-year-old former civil servant to the world’s richest man Elon Musk’s backing of US president-elect Donald Trump.
Romania’s authorities allege “preferential treatment” of Georgescu on TikTok — a claim the social media platform has denied.
In the declassified documents they also said Romania was a “target for aggressive Russian hybrid actions”, including cyberattacks.
Georgescu — a past admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin who most recently has reframed himself as “ultra pro-Trump” — told US broadcaster Sky News on Saturday that there were no links between him and Russia.
Following the vote cancellation — rare in Europe — the United States said it had faith in Romania’s institutions, while Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has slammed it as “denying the will of the people”. A new government — to be formed after the ruling Social Democrats won last weekend’s legislative elections — is expected to set a fresh date for the presidential vote.
In the parliamentary election, far-right parties secured an unprecedented third of the ballots on mounting anger over soaring inflation and fears over Russia’s war in Ukraine.