Romania’s cancelled presidential election and why it matters

Opinion polls were almost neck and neck going into Sunday’s race. Almost 19 million Romanians were eligible to choose between Calin Georgescu and liberal mayor and former TV journalist Elena Lasconi.

Latest polls even gave Lasconi the edge in the run-off.

But then on Wednesday Romania’s outgoing President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence documents from the supreme council for national defence, external suggesting that almost 800 Tiktok accounts created by a “foreign state” in 2016 were suddenly activated last month to full capacity, backing Georgescu.

Another 25,000 TikTok accounts had become active only two weeks before the first round.

Romanian foreign intelligence said Russia was the “enemy state” involved and had engaged in hybrid attacks including tens of thousands of cyber attacks and other sabotage.

Domestic intelligence put Georgescu’s sudden surge in popularity down to a “highly organised” and “guerilla” social media campaign” that involved identical messaging and social media influencers.

TikToks promoting him were not marked as election content, violating Romania’s laws, it said, while one account paid out $381,000 (£300,000) in the space of a month to users who pushed Georgescu’s candidacy, while he said he had not paid anything for his campaign.

That decision to declassify intelligence documents changed everything.

Judges from the constitutional court met on Friday to consider a large number of requests to annul the first round.

It was a complete about-turn from a decision four days before that approved the initial 24 November vote after a complete recount of 9.4 million votes.