 "Romania’s presidential election is in chaos. Here’s why TikTok is in the middle of it")
Romania is in chaos – and TikTok is right in the middle of it.
The country’s top court has ordered a recount in the first round of presidential elections after a little-known far-right candidate surged into first place after the first round of polling.
The development came amid Romania’s top security body blaming the social media platform for boosting the candidacy of Calin Georgescu – who had been polling in single digits prior to the vote.
But what happened? What do we know?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
Calin Georgescu, an independent candidate, pulled out a shock victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential election.
As per BBC, Georgescu netted 23 per cent of the vote in the first round, while opposition candidate Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union came second.
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, of the Social Democrat party, was knocked out of the race after coming in third.
This raised eyebrows for many as Georgescu never polled above five per cent prior to the vote, as per The Guardian.
Georgescu has previously praised 1930s Romanian fascist politicians as “national heroes” and martyrs.
He has also been critical of NATO and Romania’s stance on Ukraine.
He and has said the country should engage, not challenge Russia and that it would “benefit from Russian wisdom.”
Georgescu ran his campaign entirely on TikTok – the app owned by Chinese technology giant ByteDance.
As per BBC, the 62-year-old, who had just 30,000 followers weeks ago, now has over 330,000 followers.
His posts have racked up over four million likes.
“The budget of this campaign was zero… I had a very small team - a maximum of 10 people, no more. But we had millions of people behind [us],” Georgescu told the outlet.
“I’m not different - the Romanian people are different. Romanian people need freedom. Real democracy means spirituality. God. Our land. Our property. Our soul. Our family.”
Georgescu’s shock victory has led the country’s Constitutional Court to “unanimously ordered the re-verification and recounting of the voting ballots for the November 24 presidential election.”
The decision adds to the turmoil surrounding the electoral process in Romania, which is scheduled to hold three ballots in as many weeks, votes which are crucial to the direction of a country that has been pro-Western and a staunch ally of Ukraine.
The decision to call for a recount was made after conservative presidential candidate Cristian Terhes, who got 1 per cent of the votes on Sunday, challenged the ballot’s result.
Terhes has asked that the Court annul the election outcome, alleging that Lasconi got votes transferred to her from another candidate who had withdrawn from the race but still appeared on the ballots.
Terhes and another candidate Sebastian Popescu have also asked the court to void the results as Georgescu did not declare any campaign funding sources, as per The Guardian.
The court postponed a ruling for November 29 and asked for a recount.
The court will only provide the reasoning for its decision in a statement at a later date.
By law, the top court needs to validate the first round result by November 29 for the run-off vote to happen on December 8 as scheduled.
But the head of the country’s election authority said recounting 9.46 million votes currently in archives at courthouses across Romania would take days.
Why are authorities blaming TikTok?
Romanian authorities have accused the platform of giving Georgescu “preferential treatment” and “massive exposure.”
Georgescu gained many votes from young voters and Romanians living abroad.
“A presidential candidate benefited from massive exposure through preferential treatment given to him by the TikTok platform by not labelling him as a political candidate and not asking him to label electoral content,” Romania’s Supreme Defence Council said in a statement.
The country’s top security body which includes the president and prime minister alongside relevant defence institutions, also said on Thursday it had evidence of cyberattacks meant to influence the electoral process.
It said that Romania was a key target for “hostile actions by state and non-state actors, especially the Russian Federation.”
The council said there is “a growing interest” on the part of Russia “to influence the public agenda in Romanian society”.
According to Politico, Pavel Popescu, vice president of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications of Romania (ANCOM), has said he would begin the process of blocking the platform in Romania.
“I request, starting … 28.11.2024, the suspension of the TikTok platform on the territory of Romania, until the completion of the investigation by the state institutions regarding the manipulation of the electoral process,” Popescu wrote on Facebook.
His account was later deactivated.
As per Politico, Popescu claimed “thousands of accounts” on TikTok “sponsored by sources external to the Romanian state” worked to raise Georgescu’s profile.
“Unfortunately, they led to this outcome that we see today,” he added, saying the platform had ignored ANCOM’s worries ahead of the vote and “turned its back on communications with the institutions of the Romanian state.”
On Wednesday, the European Commission said it had received a request from Romania’s media regulator to open “a formal investigation into TikTok's role in the Romanian elections” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
“If the Commission suspects a breach… it can open proceedings to look into TikTok’s compliance with the DSA obligations,” it said in a statement.
But TikTok is defending itself.
The social media platform has claimed that Georgescu’s account on TikTok was labelled as a political account and treated like any other, the online platform said on Thursday, adding that it had acted on videos flagged by authorities.
“It is categorically false to claim his account was treated differently to any other candidate,” TikTok said in an emailed statement. “When Romanian authorities contacted us to flag a number of videos that lacked identifiers…, we took action on those videos within 24 hrs.”
“To date, we have found no evidence of a Covert Influence Operation on our platform within the last several weeks for the ongoing presidential election in Romania, nor evidence of foreign influence,” the platform wrote in a letter obtained by Politico.
What happens next?
Georgescu is now set to face centrist candidate Elena Lasconi in a run-off on December 8.
Under Romanian law, an election can be annulled if “fraud of such a nature as to alter the allocation of the mandate or… the order of the candidates eligible to participate in the second round of voting” is discovered.
“It’s an unprecedented situation” since the fall of communism and the transition to democracy in 1989, former Constitutional Court judge Augustin Zegrean told Romanian channel Digi24. “Things can take… a very bad and unfavourable turn.”
But the court has already rejected a separate request by another presidential candidate to annul the first round of the vote, saying the request was filed too late.
It is due to reconvene today (29 November).
Lasconi, who entered the runoff by a narrow margin of around 2,700 votes, denounced the recount announcement.
“Extremism is fought by voting, not backstage games,” Lasconi was quoted as saying by BBC.
“I call on the Central Election Bureau to handle the vote recount wisely. The law must be the same for all, not interpreted differently for some.”
“The Constitutional Court is playing with national security,” she said in a statement, adding that what it was “now trying to do is absolutely appalling for a democratic country”.
Georgescu also rejected the claims of election interference, saying in a statement that opponents “are trying… to eliminate the Romanian people’s ability to think and choose according to their own moral, Christian and democratic principles”.
“Attempts are being made to attribute a real election result to any institution, including TikTok, but none of the media and current politicians attribute real credibility to the Romanian people.”
As per BBC, a number of people have hit the streets of Bucharest as well as other cities to protest against Georgescu.
Georgescu has asked his followers to “stay home with friends and family.”
The development comes as a parliamentary election is slated for Sunday.
Analysts expect Georgescu’s victory in the first round of the presidential election to boost the far-right in the parliamentary election.
On Thursday, an AtlasIntel poll obtained by the HotNews website showed the radical right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR) in first place with 22.4 per cent of the vote, followed by the Social Democrats (PSD) on 21.4 per cent.
There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities but Moscow has previously denied interfering in foreign elections.
According to Politico, representatives of TikTok, the Romanian government and European Union officials are set to meet in Brussels.
A top EU lawmaker has also demanded that the TikTok CEO appear before the parliament and explain the role the platform played.
“We call on the CEO of TikTok to come to speak in this house and to ensure his platform conducted to no infringement under the DSA,” Valérie Hayer, head of the liberal Renew Europe group, said as per the website.
With inputs from agencies
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