Romanians speak of their country as a ”banana republic without warm weather”

Eva-Maria Raikova, Sega, December 6, 2024

On the afternoon of December 6, 2024, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the country’s presidential elections in the afternoon of December 6, 2024, in the context of the revelations and declassification of secret service documents that speak of interference by “a state actor” (interpreted as Russia) and interlopers in support of the winner of the first round, sovereignist Călin Georgescu. The Sega news site  asked Vladimir Mitev to comment on this decision as well as on the revelations of Russia’s meddling in the Romanian elections. Vladimir also commented on what he expects to happen from now on and what could be the positive and negative side of what is to come.

The developments with the Romanian elections are unprecedented. Was it expected that the results of the first round would be annulled?

The decision is surprising. Earlier this week, a recount of the votes found that there was no change in the presidential election rankings between the second and third candidates, and the Constitutional Court validated the results of the first round of the presidential election. This reassured the population that the Constitutional Court would not intervene.

The Constitutional Court’s decision to annul them came on the afternoon of December 6, 2024, at a time when the diaspora voting for the second round of the presidential elections was already underway and several tens of thousands of Romanian citizens abroad had already voted. Regardless of the arguments on which this decision was taken, it is a blow to the democratic process in an EU country. It gives the impression that elections are only valid when they reach “the right results”. Consciously or not, the Constitutional Court gives Romanian citizens arguments to talk about their country as a ‘banana republic without good times’.

If there is a deeper logic to this decision, beyond the fact that it is likely that Călin Georgescu would have won Sunday’s presidential elections and that even greater divisions would have emerged in Romanian society, it may be that the old and new elites in Romanian politics realized that the candidates in these elections were weak, unconvincing and perhaps even dangerous if they had entered the Cotroceni Palace. The positive option from now on would be for the old and new elites in the country, after measuring their strengths over the last two weeks, to hold discussions and, after a pause to calm passions, to propose new presidential candidates who inspire more confidence in the citizens and financial markets. Maybe after 10 years’ time, with Klaus Iohannis at the helm, Romanians would want to vote for a candidate who does not speak German so well. It is important to have an understanding and a formula among the elites so that the Romanian political system is prepared for the second coming of Donald Trump, without large parts of the population feeling isolated, marginalized and stigmatized.

Given the allegations that Russia interfered in the Romanian elections, does that mean it supported more candidates in the first round?

The Russian media and officials have consistently demonstrated over the past two weeks that Călin Georgescu is Russia’s preferred candidate. Accusations of Russian ties have also been levelled at AUR party leader George Simion. But both were also said to be Romanian creations…

I would not like to see all the elections in our region as a fight between West and East, between Soros and Putin. Romanian elections and all other national elections have an internal agenda. In Romania, in recent years, under the auspices of President Iohannis (who is very unpopular among Romanians), a stabilocracy has been created, similar to the one we had in Bulgaria until 2021, when there was a merger between a party and the state. Only in the Romanian case, the parties were two – the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party. This in itself created discontent among groups and citizens who were excluded or had limited access to power. And when Donald Trump came to the White House, it turned out that this stabilocracy was attacked from two sides – by sovereignists on the one side (which is the term for nationalists in a country inside the EU) and by the civil sector, by supporters of the NGO sector, which is more developed in Romania than in our country.

If the second round had taken place, we would have seen a sovereignist candidate, Călin Georgescu, and a popular candidate in NGO circles, Elena Lasconi. None of the representatives of the stabilocracy parties made it to the second round. But the Constitutional Court is considered close to the Social Democratic Party. And its leader and current prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, welcomed the Constitutional Court’s decision, while Elena Lasconi declared it illegal. And here again we see an internal Romanian agenda – the fact that a part of society and its political elite is trying to put an end to the dominance of the two big parties of the transition era, supported with the behind-the-scenes intervention of President Iohannis, while the losers of this change are opposed.

Russia, or any other international power, could exploit these objectively existing contradictions in Romanian society to reinforce the divisions within it. But the reasons for this strengthening of the sovereignist sector in Romanian society lie in a combination of domestic factors and the return of Trump, whose rule would weaken the stigma on sovereignists. Romania needs people to liaise with Donald Trump’s incoming administration, and it needs good relations with the US, no matter who will govern there.

Georgescu hid from the Romanian Central Electoral Bureau how much money was funneled into his campaign. Is there still information on how much it actually was? What else do you know about Russia’s interference in TikTok and implicitly in the electoral process in Romania? Is there any confirmation of the role of the mysterious BOGPR?

You are talking about Bogdan Peșchir, a former Romanian programmer who has a firm in Brasov and who made donations to TikTok from his bogpr account of over one million euros and made himself payments of $ 381 000 between October 24 and November 24 to TikTok account users, involved in the promotion of independent presidential candidate Călin Georgescu, including after the end of the electoral campaign, according to information presented at the meeting of the Supreme Council for the Defense of the Country on November 28, 2024, declassified this week by the Presidential Administration. The information was provided by the SRI, Romania’s domestic intelligence agency, in a report presented at the November 28 CSAT meeting.

Peșchir worked for cryptocurrency-related companies owned by Gabriel Prodanescu, a dual national who emigrated to South Africa in 1995. In fact, the South African firm contacted the TikTok influencers who promoted Georgescu and offered them €1,000 for each promotional video. “The participation of bogpr in the financing of Călin Georgescu’s promotion on the platform was confirmed by TikTok representatives during a dialog with the Romanian authorities on November 28, 2024,” the document presented at the CSAT meeting on November 28 and cited by Romanian television Digi24, reads.

For its part, the SRI confirmed the identity of the user “bogpr” and said that it was he who made payments totaling $ 381,000 between October 24 and November 24 this year to users of TikTok accounts involved in promoting candidate Călin Georgescu, including after the end of the election campaign. SRI also points out that bogpr’s actions are a violation of TikTok policies and Romanian electoral legislation.

As for Russia’s interference through social media, the main argument in this regard are the reports of various secret services at the meeting of the Romanian Supreme Council for the Defense of the Country. The reports were declassified by President Iohannis on December 4, 2024.

The Romanian investigative press also made revelations about the use of “Russian money” to influence the presidential election campaign (published by Snoop.ro) and about the promotion of Georgescu on X, Telegram and Facebook by Russian accounts and “networks specialized in destabilizing democracies” (published by Context.ro)

In the end, four pro-European parties formed a coalition promising to maintain the country’s pro-European course. Would this have isolated and weakened Georgescu anyway?

Yes, as Bulgarian journalists reported literally until yesterday, it was expected that Georgescu would become president and the government would be pro-European, so that somehow the president and the government would balance each other out. In my opinion, the declassification of service reports on the interference of a ‘state actor’ in the elections, as well as on the support given to Georgescu by the Romanian underworld, provoked outrage, which was apparently so great that Georgescu’s possible victory in the second round would have created the conditions for Romanian society to break in two. Whatever the plans had been for a kind of coexistence of sovereignist and pro-European tendencies in Romanian politics in the person of Georgescu and the united government of pro-European forces, the Constitutional Court’s decision has annulled them. 

In addition, there is the opinion that Elena Lasconi was too extreme in rejecting the Constitutional Court’s decision and that her high-level political career may also be coming to an end. Some of the liberal Romanians I am in contact with say that the Romanian political system needs to undergo a deep reset. At the same time, sovereignist tendencies in Romanian society exist objectively and without outside interference through social networks. Millions of Romanians at home and in the diaspora detest the representatives of the ‘system’. This is why I say again that if there is to be a positive development from now on, it will consist in finding a way for the different types of elites to negotiate and coherently take the country’s political system into the Trump era and beyond the ten years of Iohannis’ ten-year government.

It has been speculated that Georgescu himself was linked to the services or at least the former Securitate. Has this been confirmed?

Georgescu has been associated for years with the influential Club of Rome, where one of the leading figures is former Nicolae Ceausescu interpreter Sergiu Celac. Sergiu Celac is a member of the scientific board of the New Strategy Center, Romania’s leading think tank of security specialists. Georgescu also announced that his mentor is Mircea Malița, an influential diplomat who was a member of the central committee of the Romanian Communist Party as well as ambassador to the US and Switzerland under Ceaușescu. These are socialist-era elites.

Georgescu presents himself as an anti-system candidate because he is fighting against the new elites that emerged during the transition. He seems to have convinced his voters that he is an alternative and that he is different from the politicians who were in power. But he himself is part of the elites who were in power before the transition and who are linked both to the system then and to the post-socialist system – and are influential, for example, in the Romanian Academy, in the central bank, etc.

Will Romanians lose confidence in the electoral process – when you don’t have the right people, the vote changes?

The negative aspects of the current decision of the Constitutional Court and the disrespect for the will of the voters can only be overcome if the Romanian political elite somehow manages to reform itself, bring more quality leaders to the forefront and learn to have discussions within itself, instead of the whole population going through the shocks of the last weeks to see what the balance of power is between the different groups within it.

Until now, Romanians have been very involved and active in their public life. In Romania, there are grassroots movements in many areas where there is almost no public activity in Bulgaria – for example, for housing policy, for the rights of neurodivergent people, political theater, a movement of young lawyers, etc. This is a sign of the presence of public energy and a sense of public political activism for citizens.

At this point, I cannot yet assess how the canceled election will affect voters. But I think that if, in the new presidential elections, the Romanian political elite were to offer better candidates than before, people in the pro-European sector would appreciate the current emergency and perhaps see some sense in these extraordinary actions. I still don’t know how the sovereignists will accept the annulment of the elections. Almost nobody would accept being the perpetual loser in a political game. From now on, Romania’s political elites have a lot of work to do to correct the weaknesses that both they and the citizens have identified.

Photo: Banana Republic of Romania (source: Vlad Tarlungeanu)

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