Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) decided on March 9 to invalidate the presidential candidacy of Russia-backed far-right politician Calin Georgescu. 

The ruling is based on the Constitutional Court's decisions to annul last year's presidential elections and reject fellow far-right politician Diana Sosoaca's presidential candidacy because of her extremist rhetoric, so that the fulfillment of the other conditions for registering Georgescu’s candidacy are ‘irrelevant’, the BEC in the document published by HotNews.

“[Georgescu] violated the very obligation to defend democracy based precisely on fair, honest and impartial suffrages," the BEC decision states.

Georgescu’s ties with far-right groups, some of them paramilitary, in contact with Russian agents are currently being investigated. There is, however, no ruling in any of the cases yet. Georgescu is under judicial control after prosecutors indicted him for six counts, including attempt to overthrow state institutions.

In his electoral campaign since the annulled presidential elections last December, Georgescu painted a picture of a rather dictatorial state should he win the rescheduled election: there would be no party, and the “people” would rule the country, while those responsible for crimes in the past would be severely punished. 

The BEC’s ruling can be appealed within 24 hours to the Constitutional Court, which has another 48 hours to give the final decision.

Romania will hold presidential elections in May, after the initial ballot in November-December 2024 was annulled by the Constitutional Court based on the interference of "statal and non-statal" entities in the process. 

Georegescu’s supporters protest 

The BEC’s decision annoyed Georgescu’s supporters. Around 1,000 people were waiting for the decision in front of the BEC headquarters in downtown Bucharest, and the protest intensified after the decision was announced at 7pm. The rally was marked by violence created by a 200-strong group of protesters, but ended around midnight with only isolated events taking place in central Bucharest later during the night.

Georgescu’s bodyguard Horatiu Potra and the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party George Simion (a former leader of ultras football supporters), reportedly incited people to use force by messages on social networks, but the apparent purpose was rather to create events on the streets that would be broadcast by local and foreign TV channels (which happened quickly) rather than targeting or taking over a particular institution.

Potra is in hiding abroad with an arrest warrant on his name after police found multiple weapons hidden at his home.

After the decision was announced and Simon and Potra made their appeals to supporters, a compact group of demonstrators emerged throwing firecrackers, pieces of pavement and bottles at the gendarmes. They were insulated by the gendarmes, while the other demonstrators remained in front of the BEC. 

Georgescu calls the ruling a “blow to the heart of democracy”

Following the BEC’s decision, Georgescu claimed “Romania and Europe turned into a dictatorship.”

"A direct blow to the heart of democracy around the world! I have one more message: if democracy falls in Romania, the entire democratic world will fall! This is just the beginning. It's that simple!"

"Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny," wrote Georgescu, in a post on the X network.

Billionaire Elon Musk posted three messages on X in less than an hour after the announcement of the invalidation of Georgescu’s candidacy at the BEC meeting on the evening of March 9.

In the first message, Musk took the information of the invalidation and commented: "This is crazy."

A few minutes later, Musk retweeted a post by conservative influencer Mario Nawfal, with the following comment: "Brother again”. Nawfal complained in his post about Romanians (who he described as “Soros-linked activists”) sending a large number of objections against Georgescu to the BEC.