The election results were annulled by the Romanian Constitutional Court. Intelligence documents confirmed Russian intervention.
The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election on Friday. His decision came after intelligence documents were declassified that showed Russia had run a coordinated online campaign to support independent far-right candidate Calin Georgesco, the eventual winner of the first round of the election. TASR informs about it according to AP and Reuters reports.
The court’s decision is final and means the election must be repeated. Their second round was supposed to take place on Sunday. The court informed that it decided to annul the vote “in order to ensure its correctness and legality”.
Russia campaigned on TikTok
He came to such a decision after Acting President Klaus Iohannis on Wednesday declassified information from intelligence services, according to which Russia conducted a large-scale campaign in support of Georgesco through thousands of accounts on the TikTok and Telegram platforms.
On November 24, Georgescu won the first round of the election with almost 23 percent of the vote, despite being a relatively unknown politician and having only minimal support according to polls. He ran the campaign mainly on the TikTok network and, among other things, claimed during it that Romania must be a neutral country, highlighting Russian President Vladimir Putin. He won a lot of votes from young voters as well as Romanians living abroad.
The pro-European centrist candidate Elena Lasconiová also made it to the second round, which was to be held on Sunday. It was supported by 19 percent of voters in the first round.
