First, four factual elements of particular significance:
- After the annulment of the presidential elections by the Constitutional Court, the pro-Russian Calin Georgescu lined up again at the starting line, trying to run again for the May elections, in May. In parallel, the leaders of AUR and POT announced their full support for Georgescu.
- After the CCR invalidated the second candidacy of Calin Georgescu, the sovereignist-Putinists realigned themselves and the leaders of AUR and POT, George Simion and Anamaria Gavrilă submitted their candidacies.
It can easily be seen that Simion and Gavrilă are in a fierce competition to win the joint candidacy for the sovereignist-Putin movement. As we explained in the previous text (link at the end), the stakes are huge for both leaders and both sides and Russia has not given up on doing everything it can do to influence and once more disrupt the electoral process in Romania.
- After the election was annulled, Moscow continued to support Calin Georgescu’s re-entry into the game. Moreover, around the deadline for submitting candidacies for the new election and in the hope of intimidating Romanian judges to not remove Călin Georgescu from the race, Russia had two public interventions in the course of a single week, both with the goal of supporting Călin Georgescu – once from the foreign intelligence service, the SVR level and the second time directly from the Kremlin.
These four moments are much more relevant than they seem at first glance.
They are more than relevant than they seem because, through their actions and interest in re-entering the electoral game, AUR-Simion, POT-Gavrilă, Călin Georgescu and Moscow respectively have only cancelled the essence of their own discourse.
And the essence of their own discourse lies in the following: the annulment of the elections was illegal, illegitimate, undemocratic and unconstitutional; the only legitimate approach is to resume the elections, in May, directly with the second round, thus recognizing the ranking of the first round, the annulled one; democracy in Romania is a farce.
In other words, since the Russians and pro-Russians have intensely promoted the idea of the lack of legality and legitimacy of the November annulment, and the May re-run, for reasons of coherence, consistency and credibility, it would be normal for the pro-Russians not to show up for the elections a month and a half away, and for the Russians not refrains from mobilizing again to support the pro-Russians.
In the end, either you boycott on principle, or you admit everything and participate once again. There is no middle way, half-measures have no place, contradictions undermine your credibility, selectivity in terms of principles cancels the very idea that you have principles.
But Russians and pro-Russians are famous for their fundamental inclination towards changing behavior, speech which is divorced from deed, cynical thinking and head-to-tail hypocrisy. As for the Kremlin and its arrows everywhere, including those in Romania, the only constant can be translated as follows: one thinks, another says and another does.
But what Moscow and the political forces in Bucharest, which serve its agenda, have done so far is only half the work of self-sabotaging their own narrative related to elections and democracy in Romania.
The other half is only a month and a half away from the supreme affirmation.
On May 4, at least one of the two – Simion or Gavrilă – will be on the ticket for the presidential election. It is of course possible that one of them will also qualify for the runoff scheduled for May 18.
In the end, the sovereignist-Putin candidate who will participate in these elections will probably get several million votes.
In Romania, unlike Russia, elections are free (a fact historically demonstrated, but a fact demonstrated now, by the very possibility that one or more candidates with a pro-Russian agenda will appear on the ballot). But even more than this undeniable detail, the Russian narrative regarding elections and democracy in Romania will be turned upside down precisely by the fact that a pro-Russian candidate will be able to obtain several million votes.
These millions of votes could not be collected if the elections were not held freely, if Romania were a Russian-type dictatorship, and not a European-type democracy.
By the very possibility of the pro-Russians having a candidate, then by their own desire to run and finally by the wealth of that the pro-Russian candidate or candidates will accumulate, the pro-Russians do nothing but legitimize through facts the electoral process in Romania, the framework in which the electoral process takes place, the democracy in this country and its rule of law.
The Russian narrative is doomed to die beautifully after we all witnessed its ugly birth, following a screw in the bushes, marked by black propaganda and secret intelligence operations.
