By Alexandra Iancu, University of Bucharest.

Romanian elections elicited tremendous interest. While the jury is still out on the legal and procedural aspects of the constitutional doctrine of militant democracy (banning candidates on the grounds of illiberal statements and actions, the annulment of the presidential elections), the events unfolding during the past months are, first and foremost, an epic failure of politics. The political appeal surrounding the unexpected electoral surge of Mr. Calin Georgescu, the radical right candidate who seems to challenge half of a century of findings in social sciences, continues to spur numerous hypotheses of how it was possible, through what channels, and with what outcome. The recent ruling of the Romanian Constitutional Court on banning Georgescu from running in the presidential race is final. Mr. Georgescu’s statement in the evening of his candidacy’s invalidation – “my mission has been completed,” the seeds of ‘awakening to consciousness’ had been planted” bears however some bitter truth.

The sole focus on Călin Georgescu is to discard the elephant in the room, namely the leading causes of the recent democratic decline in Romanian politics. One might argue that understanding the origins of the recent political cataclysm could be instrumental in knowing what to do next.

The current crisis results from a long period of micromanaging political stability. For the last four years, the governmental coalition of the Romanian social democrats and liberals secured an ideological, eclectic, yet relatively stable cabinet with a comfortable parliamentary majority. The high levels of fragmentation of the parliamentary opposition, which included both progressive and radical right parties, unable to cooperate in putting pressure on the government, rarely strong-armed the executive. In an overall context of economic hardship (high budgetary deficit and public debt), the electoral erosion of governmental parties was bound to happen.  

In this vein, the 2024 electoral year was, first and foremost, an attempt to micro-manage the effects of political uncertainty by controlling the election calendar or testing viable competition formulas.  The decision to couple the EP and local elections in June 2024, presented as a measure to ensure domestic stability in a sensitive geopolitical context, bore some fruits. Social democrats and liberals fell below the symbolic – and highly desired – threshold of 50% of the vote (48,5%). Yet, the overlapping local/European electoral calendar acted as a political buffer against the emergence of a sovereigntist/integrationist cleavage (see Iancu chapter on Romania forth.). Radical positions gathered altogether about one-fifth of the vote. It was only a momentary victory. In the fall, a symmetrical attempt to play with the timings of the presidential rounds of elections and the parliamentary electoral calendar backlashed. The governing parties lost support (barely reaching 35% of votes), whereas the self-defined sovereigntist camp broke the glass ceiling of 30%. While the first round of presidential elections influenced parliamentary elections’ results, they also marked the official beginning of a genuine and visible new type of polarization. The political competition in the pro-European camp and the inability to present a common candidate in the electoral race had an ample effect on the competition structure in the first round of the presidential elections.  Fourteen candidates competed against each other. Plain calculus on election’s results shows that a center-right alliance or a joint candidate of the governmental coalitions would have easily beaten Georgescu’s score.

Legal conundrum and lack of accountability

Starting with the ruling in October to ban Diana Șoșoacă, a radical right candidate, from the presidential competition on the grounds of the court’s newfound mission to defend constitutional values, to the annulment of the first round of presidential elections and the banning of a second right-wing candidate Călin Georgescu, the Court became the centre of a national and international debate about the legitimacy of its interventions in the electoral processes. For some opinion leaders, the Court raised to the challenge of defending democracy; for others, it self-bootstrapped its jurisdiction. However, a note should be made. The CCR’s activism is far from exceptional, resulting from a long process of individualizing the Court as the most significant problem-solver in Romanian crises, of which there are many and recurrent. This was primarily the effect of a political choice. All major parties/actors took key moments to legitimize their options not politically/democratically but through the Court. While it is true that the Romanian CC rulings spurred an impressive wave of political emotions and polarization, it failed – as usual – in nudging public institutions to assess and become accountable for their action/inaction. For instance, the decision to annul the first round of presidential elections came after intelligence service briefs were declassified, suggesting that Călin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russia politician who came in first in the first round of elections (22,94%), benefitted from a mass interference operation carried out from abroad. While Georgescu has been indicted on an extensive list of offenses, no significant sanctions on the institutional failures preceding the campaign or related to the intelligence briefs came to light until the present day. The recent change of the president of the Permanent Electoral Authority seems oddly unfair, as a potential systemic failure of state institutions seems without other notable outcomes. This could only boost conspiracy theories and victimization strategies by the far-right.

The Georgescu model.

Calin Georgescu’s rampant ascent did not come out of the blue. An intensive social media campaign using TikTok contributed to bolstering his public notoriety and challenging preexistent values towards his candidacy. Alleged foreign intervention (which needs substantiation) and a colorful entourage (mercenaries, shady businessmen, etc.) suggest he was not the lonely underdog fighting the system with zero funding. However, while he branded himself as a messianic leader, it is not less worthy of mention that Georgescu masterfully manipulated preexistent political, social, and economic systemic failures.

In the first round of elections, Georgescu voters had been primarily young people (almost a third of the citizens aged 18-24 years old) with medium levels of education, residing mainly in small and medium-sized towns. His electoral backing also received an impressive vote of confidence from the Romanian diaspora. The low electoral score of Georgescu in Bucharest (13%) also suggests a potential regional/economic divide activated in the recent elections (as the Bucharest-Ilfov region is also highly developed from a social and financial standpoint as compared to other areas of the country. However, the economy is only partially to blame for the contemporary hurdles of Romanian politics. Recent forms of polarization have more in common with the symbolism of inequality (and different forms of social marginality) than proper socioeconomic grievances, as the country’s Gini Index has continuously declined.

Two days before the conclusion of the registration process of future candidates for the next presidential elections, the attention continues to turn toward various names and their fitness to govern or to political alliances and projections in terms of the electoral outcomes. From an institutional standpoint, the recent constitutional adjudication was unlikely to yield a different result. However, it is still accurate to say that Georgescu’s ban on running could end up solidifying his legacy. The seeds have been planted. The glorification of the far-right interwar Romanian leaders, the challenge of the Ukrainian-Romanian border status quo, hardline Euroscepticism, and the antimigrant discourse came to the fore for the first time. In the absence of a political program meant to respond to some of the causes of his political success, it is more than likely that his ideas will amplify and increase the identity gap over time. In the short run, it is also expected to create further resentment and surprises at the polls.

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Alexandra Iancu is a professor at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bucharest. She teaches courses on comparative politics, political parties and ideology, democratization and democratic backsliding.