(CN) — A growing crisis over presidential elections in Romania is becoming more dire and dangerous after violent protests broke out Sunday night following an order to block Călin Georgescu, a popular far-right politician accused of receiving illegal Russian backing, from entering the race.
Romania’s election authorities barred Georgescu on Sunday, arguing he posed a threat to the country’s democracy. He challenged the decision, but it was expected to be upheld by the Constitutional Court. His likely exclusion from the May election leaves the race wide open and very volatile.
Sunday’s ban sparked mass protests outside the Central Election Bureau in Bucharest with clashes erupting between police and Georgescu’s supporters. There were reports that protesters hurled stones, smashed windows and overturned at least one vehicle. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowds. Several officers were injured.
Georgescu blasted the ruling as part of a coup to keep him from power.
“A direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide,” he said, writing on X. “I have one message left! If democracy in Romania falls, the entire democratic world will fall! This is just the beginning. It’s that simple! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!”
In November, he came from nowhere to shock the political establishment by winning the first round of presidential elections. Then, as he appeared poised to win the second round and take the helm, the Constitutional Court stepped in and annulled the election.
The high court ruled that he posed a danger to the constitutional order and that the election had to be canceled due to interference from foreign actors.
Romania’s intelligence service accused Russia of being behind a wildly successful TikTok campaign that turned the unknown Georgescu into a political star for millions of Romanians.
On Feb. 26, as he was on his way to register for the May elections, Georgescu was arrested and indicted on six charges, including incitement to undermine the constitutional order, spreading false information and founding a racist and fascist organization. He’s an apologist for Romania’s World War II fascist leaders, calling them national heroes.
The events surrounding Georgescu have become a major flashpoint in the escalating animosity between U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and the European Union.
In an explosive speech last month at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance pointed to Georgescu’s case as evidence the EU was becoming undemocratic by cracking down on far-right political parties and refusing to allow them into government.
He claimed the election was canceled due to “flimsy suspicions” by Romania’s intelligence agency and “enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.”
Vance said Europeans should “have some perspective” because it seemed to him a failure of democracy to annul elections due to a “few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country.”
“The argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections,” he said. “You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”
Elon Musk too has taken aim at Romania’s actions against Georgescu and went on X to call it “crazy” to bar his candidacy. Numerous far-right figures in Europe, including Italy’s Matteo Salvini, condemned Romania for banning Georgescu.
Countering the rhetoric from Washington and the far right, in a recent televised speech French President Emmanuel Macron cited Russian interference in Romania’s election as part of the reason why the EU must embark of a major rearmament in the face of the menace coming from Moscow.
“The crisis is not national anymore,” said Sorina Cristina Soare, an expert on Romanian politics at the University of Florence in Italy, speaking by telephone.
“What I think is really dangerous for the time being is the potential of violence, street violence,” Soare said.
Sunday’s clashes was a jarring reminder of darker days for a country that has not seen a lot of political violence since the end of communism and the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu.
But Georgescu’s run for the presidency has exposed high levels of discontent in Romania, a country of 19 million people with a notoriously corrupt political class. As an underdeveloped and largely working-class country struggling with its fascist and communist past, many Romanians do not feel that they have benefited from EU membership and Georgescu’s nationalist message appealed to them.
Many Romanians are furious over what they see as the establishment’s attempt to steal the election and cart their favorite candidate off to prison. Polls showed Georgescu leading the presidential race with about 40% of the vote.
“It’s not so much anymore about what he says, but about what he epitomizes,” Soare said. “He epitomizes a protest vote against the Romanian establishment.”
Georgescu’s outsider run caught the imagination of Romanians with his immaculately groomed style, black belt in judo and anti-establishment views.
He calls the EU a misguided and destructive colonial project that hasn’t been good for a majority of Romanians. He also sees NATO as serving American and not Romanian interests. He doesn’t condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and instead talks about the need for a new understanding with the Kremlin.
He also wraps himself in the Romanian Orthodox Church and says it plays a stabilizing role to ward off the perceived insidious invasion of liberal ideas where gender is flexible, homosexuality is welcomed and friendliness toward refugees is exalted.
He also holds conspiratorial views: He doubts the 1969 Apollo moon landing took place and questions the official narrative about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
With Georgescu unlikely to run for the presidency, Soare said a host of other possible right-wing and far-right contenders may seek to enter the race and position themselves as his alternative.
“It will be difficult to be a functional carbon copy of Georgescu in electoral terms,” she said. “He became the symbol of an anti-systemic, anti-establishment, anti-mainstream party position in the electoral arena.”
Soare said it was very difficult to predict who might win with Georgescu out of the picture. She added that Georgescu also faced a tough race even if he were allowed to run.
Nicușor Dan, the mayor of Bucharest, was in second place in polls with about 20% of the vote and may be in the best position to win. He is an independent with a mixture of liberal and right-wing views.
Regardless of the election outcome, Soare expected Romania to be riven with conflict for a long time.
“The exit from this crisis won’t come in the aftermath of the first or second round of the election, whatever the result will be,” she said. “It is just the beginning of a high level of polarization that will be difficult to deal with in the short while; it will be a long-term process. Social peace is not easy to rebuild.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.