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Romania’s President Declines To Step Down This Month After Controversial Elections

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BUCHAREST/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis says he won’t resign on December 21 as planned but will leave after a new head of state is elected.

He addressed the nation late Friday after the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections, citing irregularities after security services suggested pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round due to Russian interference.

He was to face liberal Elena Lasconi in a runoff on Sunday, December 8. Lasconi is fiercely pro-NATO and pro-European Union and could become Romania’s first woman president. She condemned the court ruling, saying it “tramples Romania’s democracy.”

New presidential elections are now due in February or March after a new government is installed following Sunday’s parliamentary vote, which was held separately from the presidential poll.

“According to the Romanian constitution, the president continues his mandate until the new president takes his oath. So when the new president will be invested, that is when I leave as president,” Iohannis explained in televised remarks.

He said he has no ambition to become the next prime minister. Iohannis said he agreed with the Constitutional Court ruling. Following [the first round of the presidential] elections, I started receiving notes from intelligence services about some strange things,” Iohannis recalled.

“I received the reports, and I was very worried about what I read, so I convened the Romanian National Security Council,” he explained. “The conclusions were grave.”

ILLEGAL SUPPORT

He said it became clear that Georgescu benefitted from “massive illegal election support” despite declaring “zero spending on his election campaign.”

Iohannis said he “received information from services” that the pro-Russia candidate “was illegally supported by a foreign country, which constitutes a national security matter.”

Georgescu ran a successful campaign on the social media platform TikTok.

His popularity exploded in the weeks before the vote, with the candidate gaining tens of millions of views days before the first round, apparently in a campaign backed by Moscow.

Iohannis’ words confirmed Romania’s intelligence agencies’ statements that Georgescu’s win was “not a natural outcome” and that a coordinated social media campaign by a “state actor” artificially propped up his victory.

The documents showed that an alleged pre-organized sleeper network suddenly became active two weeks before the election.

Romanian intelligence concluded that the network used methods typical of a state actor in recruiting and coordinating with others through the messaging platform Telegram.

1 MILLION SPENT

The documents also found that almost 1 million euros ($1.056,000) was spent during the campaign by an individual who supported Georgescu’s candidacy.

Georgescu, who raised eyebrows with his fringe beliefs and expressed support of Romanian World War II Nazi leaders, claimed he had no campaign budget and was helped through volunteers.

On Friday, he said the Constitutional Court decision “is more than a legal controversy. It is basically a formalized coup d’état.”

In televised remarks, he said: “Dear friends, we are in the Christmas fast, and today is St. Nicholas Day. On this day, the Romanian state has taken democracy and trampled it underfoot.”

Yet government leaders in the European Union and the United States view him as a danger to Romania’s fragile democracy, which was introduced after the 1989 Romanian Revolution, following decades of dictatorship.

Despite the turmoil, President Iohannis said, “Romania is a safe, solid country” that will overcome the latest hardships.

Romania is a crucial member state of the NATO military alliance as it has a long border with war-torn Ukraine. It has supported Ukraine with military aid to halt the Russian offensive.