East vs west? Romania's biggest vote since the fall of communism
Europe seems to love an existential election. There's one happening right now in Poland, at the same time as one here in Romania.
It's the most important vote since the 1989 revolution, one voter tells me, as she proudly poses for a photo holding a leaflet for the candidate Nicușor Dan. He's the mayor of Bucharest, and is seen by her as a safe pair of pro-EU, pro-Ukraine hands, as opposed to the populist George Simion.
This is the outsider election. Both candidates in this second-round presidential run-off are not from the main political parties that have dominated Romanian politics since the fall of communism. That's because there is, as with elsewhere on the continent and beyond, a frustration with the status quo and politics as usual. People want change, but there are two very different types of change on the ballot this Sunday.
Simion has talked about bashing the globalists and bringing
Donald Trump's
MAGA agenda to Romania. While he and his team say he is not against the EU, he has been touring Europe this week and meeting many Eurosceptics. He appeared at a rally in Poland with their nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki, and he met Matteo Salvini, Italy's deputy prime minister, with Simion speaking about uniting forces to defund EU institutions and take back power from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
And so last week, thousands took to the streets of the Romanian capital waving EU flags in support of Dan, who fully backs the union and has said he will continue to support
Ukraine
, unlike Simion. Polls suggest a tight race, but Dan's campaign believes it has the momentum. With Simion off around the continent, he's missed a number of TV debates, allowing Dan to make his appeal to the people almost unchallenged. Of course, Simion's team argue that given Romania's diaspora in Europe are a key voting bloc, he's shoring up their support while he's out of the country.
Looming over this election is
Russia
, because this second-round vote was meant to take place last year. In the first round in November, there was a shock result: the winner was the pro-Russian candidate, Călin Georgescu. He'd been polling in the single digits, yet came first with 23 per cent. So questions were raised and reports began to emerge about his surprising popularity late in the day on TikTok. A declassified intelligence report alleged meddling from Moscow and so just before the second-round run-off, Romania's constitutional court cancelled the election, citing foreign interference.
Mădălina Voinea combats disinformation at a think tank called Expert Forum. She says the November result involved internal and external interference and that the tactics were a copy and paste approach used by the Russians in other elections, such as in neighbouring Moldova. But Voinea says that the annulment of the last election was not explained properly to the Romanian people. 'Annulling the elections, in my opinion, only created a vicious circle that we see now even more support for the far right, almost doubling the votes for the candidate.'
Indeed, with Georgescu now barred from running, Simion has hoovered up his supporters, appearing alongside Georgescu when he voted in the first round. Simion, who won 41 per cent of the vote, has even suggested the pro-Kremlin Georgescu could be his prime minister.
With Simion away, I spoke with Ramona Bruynseels, a member of his party who sits in Romania's parliament. She denied any pro-Russian elements among her group.
'I would like to send a very, very clear message,' she tells me. 'Romania will stay in the European Union. Romania just wants to have a more powerful voice in the EU. And Romania wants its national identity to be respected.' She said Simion stood for 'family, faith, liberty, and democracy'.
But despite her reassurances, I asked about Simion's anti-Ukraine stance. 'It's important for us to see what the United States will do. But if we were to listen to the Romanian people, we would stop, straightaway, any kind of involvement in Ukraine. And this is because Romanians are afraid that any kind of involvement exposes Romania, and we don't want surprises like the war being extended or Romania being attacked.'
'Annulling the elections, in my opinion, only created a vicious circle that we see now even more support for the far right, almost doubling the votes for the candidate.'
– Mădălina Voinea
That's the stance that worries leaders in Brussels, as well as people in Bucharest. Iulian Fota, a former national security adviser, has serious concerns about a Simion presidency. 'I don't want to say that Romania will make an alliance with Russia, but we will open our ear to them'. He thinks that even if Simion's team plays down their rhetoric around the EU and Moscow, he will be unpredictable once in office.
'He will be tempted to dilute our relations with the EU, he will ask for all kinds of concessions, he will try to reverse some policies,' Fota says, warning that Simion is all about ideology, instead of 'better economic policies, better social policies, and it's difficult to imagine how we can get that without European participation and support'.
That final point is something even Simion supporters can get behind. About two hours outside of the capital, I met voters in Călărași. Here you can see the areas where Communism feels closer in time than the EU era, with crumbling apartment blocks.
This is the outsider election. Both candidates in this second-round presidential run-off are not from the main political parties that have dominated Romanian politics since the fall of communism.
I chat to some men passing the day playing the tile game Rummikub, which was created by a Romanian. Sandu tells me that in the past, there was the rich, the middle class, and the poor. 'Now, the middle class no longer exists. It's just the rich and the poor.' Has the EU been good then for Romania, I ask. 'No', he says. Another voter, Aurelia, says she's going with Simion, because 'he seems closer to our peasant soul. Because we are peasants, we work hard.'
But even here, some doubt Simion. Ion tells me he's with Dan because if Simion wins, 'we won't have justice anymore. It was already weak, but we'll lose our rights. And this Simion will be a danger for the country.'
'Now, the middle class no longer exists. It's just the rich and the poor.'
– Sandu
The big question ahead of the vote this Sunday, is what role misinformation will play. When I managed to grab a few words with Dan before one of his debates, I asked him whether he was concerned about Russian interference. 'I don't think so, there was some influence in the past, on small sites.' But is Russia still a threat to Romania, I ask? 'It could be.'
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