Komšiluk

Romania sets new election date, but risks same result – POLITICO

Romania has set a date to rerun its presidential election after concerns of Russia’s “aggressive hybrid action” first time round, but there’s still a risk the result may be similar at the second attempt and see ultranationalist Călin Georgescu triumph.

The new vote will take place on May 4, with a runoff planned two weeks later, on May 18.

The first round of Romania’s election on Nov. 24 last year triggered international shockwaves thanks to the victory of Georgescu, who was propelled from obscurity by a wildly successful TikTok campaign. The contest was annulled before the second round could take place.

Even though Georgescu’s win — on 23 percent — sparked the panic that ultimately led to the annulment of the vote, he still appears very much in contention for the rerun. Much will now depend on whether he is disqualified by the Constitutional Court because of accusations of undeclared funding.

His continued, and possibly even growing, popularity is partly due to deep suspicion of the cronyism and nepotism of the traditional old parties, who are viewed by many Romanians as pulling strings to annul the first vote.

Georgescu, a vaccine-skeptical maverick who called Russian President Vladimir Putin a patriot and opposes aid to Ukraine, is seen as a threat to Bucharest’s position in the EU and NATO, although he would — to some degree — be held in check by parliament and the government if he were to win.

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Since November, Georgescu’s profile has boomed and he remains the favorite for May’s election, according to a poll commissioned by Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, who is also running for president.

That poll showed at least 40 percent of Romanians plan to vote for Georgescu, Dan told Digi24, without specifying how many people were polled.

“The frustrations he channels as a candidate, the anti-system vibe as well as his promises for the future, cannot be easily matched by another candidate,” Magdin said.

But Victor Ponta, a Social Democrat member of the Romanian Parliament, and a former prime minister, suggested the mayor’s poll was fictitious.

“You don’t run polls over the holidays — it’s an invention — Mr. Dan didn’t even specify the name of the so-called polling company,” Ponta told POLITICO.

The leaders of Romania’s governing coalition parties — the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberal Party, the Hungarian minority party and representatives of other ethnic minorities — also confirmed Wednesday that former National Liberal Party leader Crin Antonescu was their common candidate for the presidential election.

Antonescu, who is married to former EU Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean, is a former Senate leader. He ran for president unsuccessfully in 2009 but hasn’t held any political position over the past decade. Ponta, his former ally, called him “the most representative for the [Romanian] political system of the last 30 years.”

But that’s exactly what Romanians rejected in the first round of the cancelled presidential election last year, when none of the representatives of the mainstream parties made it into the runoff.

Magdin argued it was hard to find a candidate whom Romanians know well enough and who could stand up to Georgescu.

“Antonescu’s profile, yes, you can say it’s a bit of an oldie, but he can also be a goldie, because he has been a little bit more romantic than the local political average and he is good in terms of delivering speeches, which you can’t say about a lot of the opponents that Mr. Georgescu may face in the second round,” Magdin said.

Antonescu could not be immediately reached for comment.

Approaching the second vote, Romania’s mainstream political parties need to explain to voters the dangers of the extremist trend that Georgescu personifies, and the difference between the European model, based on the rule of law, and the Russian model, based on violence, said Siegfried Mureșan, a member of the European Parliament from the National Liberal Party.

Nektivni Ugnelj wrote:Oni su poništiti izbore zbog ruskog mešanja za njega - i sad on ponovo može da se kandiduje? 

Jel ostao neko normalan na ovom svetu?

Del Cap wrote:"ruskog"

na kraju, te tik tok kampanje je zapravo platila jedna lokalne (lib) stranka da šukne ovim vodećim.



nema.