Romanian Constitutional Court cancels presidential election amid Russian influence fears

https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-court-cancels-presidential-election-runoff-tiktok-russian-influence-calin-georgescu/

Posted by Alarmed_Mistake_9999

4 comments

  1. Submission Statement: ever since a radical anti-EU and anti-establishment candidate pulled off a major upset in the first round of Romania’s Presidential election, Romania has been in complete turmoil, a trend accelerated with across-the-board losses of the Pro-Western Parties (some of whom hate each other as well) in the parliamentary elections. Now, it appears the Romanian establishment says that the Romanian public was too clouded by Russian disinformation to make a properly informed decision. Interesting times to say the least.

    If I am not mistaken, the President of Romania is constiutionally weaker than Macron, but stronger than the German President.

  2. I’m sure a lot of people are fine with this but this is just crazy to me. The public was misinformed so the election results were cancelled? Maybe I’m not reading the right articles but how is this not wild? 

  3. Popper’s paradox of tolerance, I guess; the man obviously is insane, and Russian interference is possibly true, but I don’t know of any evidence of outright fraud, so this seems to be undermining liberalism to protect it.

    Edit: Seems the evidence of Russian interference is true but it was still just speech.

  4. Short term solution, but moves like this will only exasperate the chronic illness that is liberalism in decline.

    The move makes little sense to me, except as a desperate kneejerk reaction. Do they think he will get fewer votes in a subsequent election? Unlikely. Do they think the center and left will consolidate around two candidates to keep him from the runoff? Impossible. Do they think they can remove him from the ballot in time for the redo election? Maybe. But this would be disastrous to the legitimacy of their democratic institutions.

    What seems likely is that in any new election with him on the ballot, they will end up with him and another in a runoff. In such a case they’re no better off, they’ve only bought time. This all seems like it will backfire, like the attempts to use the US court system to keep trump off the ballot in 2024. You can’t litigate yourself out of the problem of populism. If you don’t address the root problems you make peaceful change impossible.

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