Unlock the digestive of free editor
Roula Khalaf, the FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The hard-right leader George Simion was the clear winner of the first round of Romania’s presidential electoral vote and will face a pro-EB centrist on the May 18th.
With nearly 99 percent of the internal votes and more than 80 percent of the diaspora votes numbered late Sunday, Simion was a fugitive winner with 40.3 percent of the vote, according to the Central Bureau of Romania.
The independent leader of Bucharest Nicușor Dan came second with 20.9 percent, and Crin Antonescu, another centralist who was the joint candidate of the three parties in the ruling coalition, ended the third with 20.4 percent of the internal votes. Dan also led Antonescu with a comfortable difference in the Diaspora vote, which is calculated separately.
The voting was reprinted after the first round of the ultranationalist politician Caorgescu was canceled by the Constitutional Court on charges of Russian intervention. Georgescu, an ally of Simion, was then banned from staying in the new vote.
The cancellation of the November score was heavily criticized by the administration of US President Donald Trump, with Vice President JD Vance, saying it was an example of Europe’s liberal elite that failed to support democratic freedoms.
Simion said in a Facebook post: “Romanians are the winners. Thanks!”
Antonescu said: “It’s an irreversible result … I leave this difficulty with my head held up. People’s vote must be respected.” He did not approve any of the two remaining candidates.
A final conclusion is expected to be announced on Monday morning. Nearly 1 million Romanians abroad voted, most for Dan or Simion. There were 11 candidates in total.
Costin Cioobanu, a researcher at Denmark’s Aarhus University, said the first round result reflected a “second electoral shock to the ruling coalition (after Georgescu’s victory in the canceled November vote). There is a opposition to the main alliance in Romania”.
With Simion as President, Romania’s relative political stability for the past few years could be endangered. It may also go closer to other Eastern EU countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, which openly question the block values and have unclear links with countries such as Russia.
Popular support for Simion, the leader of the Nationalist Aur Party, whose campaign was adopted by Georgescu, is a further sign of the deep disappointment of Romanian voters with the main political elites, which have shared power since the end of communism.
Simion, a pro-trump-right populist, told FT on Sunday that if he was elected president, he would try to return Georgescu to a leading position to reflect his popularity.
“In a democracy, you let people decide,” Simion said. “So, as president, I can change members of the Constitutional Court, members of the secret services, so I can provide fair elections and I can be a mediator to find the majority in parliament. This is the way we can think of having it.”
In the second round, Dan is expected to try to form an alliance of all the main forces to defeat Simion, but can fight to do so.
“I’m not very worried about such an alliance,” Simion said. “This is just a smoke bomb, a deviation (from the fact) that I am not extremist, hooligan, isolation they are portraying me.”
In the second round Simion could receive voters from former Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s supporters, a leftist politician returned to Trump’s fan, who won 13.3 percent on the vote on the almost complete results.
Georgescu, who had voted well over 40 percent before being stopped running again in March, and Simion threw their votes together in a suburbs of Bucharest, where some supporters cheered pro-georgescu slogans.
The cancellation introduces Romania into a political crisis at a sensitive moment. Its outlook of credit rating is shortened to the negative by Moody’s. And it is in great need for reforms while struggling to treat the highest EU budget deficit.
A major contributor to NATO’s efforts to contain Russian maneuvers in the Black Sea region, Romania is an important road to exports from Ukraine and has also provided military assistance to its neighbor.
As the voting continued on Sunday, a Russian hacker group claimed to have closed the websites of several ministries and Antonescu’s campaign website. But the attack of denial of service was quickly destroyed, the National Cyber Security Center said.
