INSIDER
He shook Romania’s political landscape in November when he secured the first round in the presidential election, going from an obscure candidate to beating the incumbent prime minister.
Romania’s pro-European parties agreed to form a majority government made up of groupings that were traditionally on opposite sides and shutting out far-right nationalists who made significant gains in the election on Dec. 1.
Romania’s far-right presidential candidate Calin Georgescu has protested outside a closed polling station against a top court’s unprecedented decision to annul the first round of the vote in which he emerged as the frontrunner.
A top Romanian court has annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election, days after declassified intelligence alleged Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outsider who won the first round.
The European Union has sent TikTok an urgent request for more information about Romanian intelligence files suggesting that Moscow coordinated influencers on its platform to promote an election candidate who became the surprise front-runner in the nation’s presidential election.
The surprise front-runner in Romania’s presidential election insisted to The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that he is not pro-Russian — hours before Romania declassified intelligence alleging Moscow ran an online campaign to promote him to voters.
A top Romanian court has asked the official electoral authority to recount and verify all of the ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election.
Electoral data shows a far-right populist leads in Romania’s presidential election and will likely face leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu in a runoff in two weeks.
