In addition to the legislatures in Portugal, Romania today has the second and last lap of the repeated presidential, without a winner declared at the match and with much at stake. And in Poland, voters are called to vote in the first lap of the presidential, with a libertarian candidate of the “alternative right” and a “powerful Danish” of far left betting on shaking the country’s political waters. Uniting the three plebiscites is the fact that cyber campaigns are increasingly proven to influence voters through misinformation and false accounts on social networks
For Guardian, “the second round round is the most crucial” of this, an expression inspired by the so-called Super Tuesday that takes place in the United States of America every four years, during the primaries of the parties.
Throughout today’s voters from three countries around the Atlantic are called to the polls to define the direction of their respective nations, starting with Portugal, who again has legislative elections after the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, and lost-a motion of confidence in parliament in the face of suspicious activities of companies linked to their family.
In addition to Portugal, two east European countries will have presidential elections on Sunday, starting with Romania, which has been trying to elect their next head of state last November. After Cilin Georgescu, a relatively unknown figure from the ultra-nationally and far-right electorate, he won the first lap of the elections, were suspected of Russian interference in the process through Tiktok and other social networks, leading the constitutional court to annul the elections two days of the second round.
EU cohesion and Ukraine support also votes in Romania
Much has happened since then, starting with the removal of Georgescu from the new race, while on suspicion of irregularities in campaign expenses, illegal use of digital technology and promotion of fascist groups.
After that, the first lap of the new presidential elections, which took place two weeks ago, coming out of her George Simion, ultranational and Euro-bound with far-right ARE, and Nicuşor Dan, a centrist pro-Ue who is mayor of Bucharest. They are the ones who compete for the second and last electoral lap this Sunday, with the polls to anticipate a more close race than ever-and those who win will have, among other functions, to appoint Romania’s next prime minister, after the previous one was fired because his candidate failed to find out for this second lap.
“Former Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has made a Crasso mistake that can cost Romania very expensive.” “Under normal circumstances, even if Simion was elected president, he could not constitute a prime minister constitutionally, so we could have a scenario in which the prime minister was and would represent an effective opposition to the president, it would be a kind of combat cohabitation. But instead, Ciolacu preferred to focus on his party and basically gave a gift to the future president.”
The big doubt today is to what extent Georgescu’s supporters will mobilize to support Simion as a way to “bring their revenge to the end”-and to what extent the opposition will mobilize to prevent the next president of Romania from being an ultranationalist confessed admirer of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, very critical of the EU and that opposes the supply of help to Ukraine.
The candidate has insisted that “Romania will never be friends with Kremlin or Putin” and that he does not intend the country to leave the EU or the NATO. Still, there is great fears that it is alienated with the hungary of Viktor Orbán and the Slovakia de Robert I stay in his disruptive postures within the European block.
Given that the next president “will be kings maker, in the sense that he will appoint the next prime minister,” says Miscoi, “this will increase the presidents of the president and it is very likely that, in Simion, he names an obedient prime minister, which means he will do what Orbán does in Hungary or what I am doing in Slovakia.”
In other words, the Romanian expert said, “Romania will be a missing piece in the puzzle of the defense of the Eastern Flank of EU and NATO, [que] It will no longer be solid as a rock, collapse in military terms, because then Russia will have direct entrance in the heart of Europe through Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. ”
Those who go ahead and those who follow right behind in Poland
Equally important, although not decisive for now, are the presidential elections in Poland, the most vital country of the so -called eastern flank of the allies. This Sunday, the Poles are called to choose who want to play the second and last shift of the race to the head of state, with 13 candidates to compete for the place.
The polls anticipate that the Warsaw’s mayor, centrist Rafał Trzaskowski of the Civic Coalition of the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk, should be first, and may compete in this second round, with Karol Nawrockki, a historian who applies as independent but supported by the Conservative Law and Justice Party (PIS).
There are hope that if Trzaskowski is elected to the second round, Tusk can advance with his promised reforms that were blocked by the departure president, Andrzej Duda, he also supported by PIS, thanks to the head of state’s veto power. But before that, there are doubts about the ability of two other “out of the system” candidates to shake this first lap.
We talked about Sławomir Mentzen, a politician of the Libertarian Party of far-right Konfederacja (Confederation)-which, according to the polls, can be third in Sunday’s vote, if not even better positioned-and Adrian Zandberg of the Razem Party (together), a Denmark Born Polaco that is nicknamed “the powerful Dane” by A part of the country’s electorate and media, given its imposing figure and its extreme-left views.
As several analysts point out, Mentzen and Zandberg have in common the fact that they have dominated the policy of the sixth largest economy in Europe, between the so -called traditional civic and PIS parties. Beyond that, only the fact that both declare themselves as a “antisystem.”
Misinformation further polarizes electorates
A great doubt about this first Polish presidential lap, based on Romania’s recent experience, is what will be the impact of cyber campaigns to try to influence the electorate on the context of the elections. A few days ago, the Poland’s National Cyberrseness Authority (NASK) with the objective of destabilizing Sunday’s electoral process ”, based on the“ network of hundreds of false accounts in Network X that coordinated, disseminated consistent messages with the propaganda of the Russian Federation ”.
The institute says it has detected the same narratives on Telegram, published by “accounts known for its participation in Russian misinformation activities”, with the content of publications, especially addressing highly polarizing issues for the Polish electorate, “including security, foreign policy, migration and the socioeconomic situation.”
Just as NASK has identified, since the beginning of the year, more than 10,000 English accounts and Polaco trying to influence Sunday’s elections alleging threats from “terrorist attacks” on the day of the vote, Cyabra also found that 58% of the accounts that support André Ventura’s arrival are false.
cybersecurity expert José Triblet points out that the manipulation of public opinion through fake social networks has become more than a diffuse threat: it is today an affordable, automatic and unmistakable business.
“We have never really realized the depth of what is talking about, focused too much on the issue of data protection, the foam of things rather than elementary,” said the founder and former president of the Institute of Systems and Computers of Instituto Técnica Technical (INESC-PIST), who speaks in a “western digital space”.
At the end of the week, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) said it is aware of these online misinformation processes, but nothing can do “unless the electoral process itself”.
In Romania, where the Constitutional Court was forced to cancel the first presidential elections based on records collected by the country’s information agencies on misinformation campaigns, it is already possible to make a first analysis of the results of this cyber interference with electoral processes – and reactions to it.
“In Romania there are a growing number of people who believe it was the right thing to do,” Miscoiu told CNN. “However, the result of this decision was the ultra radicalization of Georgescu supporters and their commitment to bring their revenge to the end – that’s why they accepted George Simion, although they didn’t like it so much, that’s why they vote for him, to take revenge on the system.”
But if many are taking revenge, others feel galvanized by the existence of these proven “networks paid by organizations near Russia, which are part of a wider operation that also aims at the molding, Bulgaria and Poland,” says the Romanian analyst, who highlights the huge polarization of Romania in the context of this new trip to the polls. “’Back second’ was Simion’s campaign slogan, which consolidated the far right movement to support it. Still, on the other hand, it also consolidated the opposition, because many see [o candidato] as a real danger to Romania. ”
