Romania’s main opposition party, AUR, has rejected reports from NATO and Romanian authorities that Russia meddled in Romania’s Nov. 2024 elections. It said claims of manipulation were “pseudo.”
AUR said their own report on the annulled elections released this month was a response to President Nicusor Dan’s report to EU leaders last week in which outlined alleged Russian manipulation of the presidential election in favor of a candidate. The top court cancelled the election over the interference. Moscow has denied meddling.
AUR party also claimed that President Dan “meets all the necessary conditions to be suspended” from office. Dan defeated AUR candidate, George Simion, in the runoff of the presidential election redo in May.
The 47-page document is described as an analysis of the events that led to the annulment of the election “in a manner that does not comply with the constitutional norms and the fundamental principles of the democratic rule of law,” it said.
The presentation of this report is a necessary step for the public opinion to understand in depth how this situation was reached and what are the long-term implications for the Romanian democratic system,” AUR said in a press release.
According to the party, “democracy is defended through knowledge and solidarity between those who believe in its fundamental values.”
Simion, who heads AUR, said the report was “an opposition to the ‘pseudo-report’ presented by Nicusor Dan” in Copenhagen to EU leaders about Russian meddling in the election and its ongoing hybrid war.
He said the report would be translated and delivered to foreign embassies in Bucharest and other international organizations.
Simion also hit out at Prosecutor General Alex Florenta who charged Calin Georgescu, who rose from obscurity to improbably win the first round of a presidential election, before he was barred from standing in a re-run, of plotting a violent coup.
The charges are linked to a police operation in December 2024 after the presidential election was canceled when officers intercepted 21 people, some carrying knives and guns, heading to Bucharest to allegedly overthrow the government. Some of the indicted have links to Russia, General Prosecutor Alex Florenta said later in an interview with Antena 3.
Mr. Simion, however, accused “those that have been leading Romania for 35 years, some (are) impostors, others are usurpers, today are trying to accuse us of having worked on an attempted coup d’état,” said the AUR leader.
He accused Dan of fighting with the nationalists who call themselves ‘sovereigntists’ who represent “at least half of Romania’s population.”
George Simion announced the initiation of several actions with the presentation of the report, which would bring democracy back home.
He also accused Moldova, where pro-European party won parliamentary election on Sept.28 of trying to “copy this model of coup d’état in Romania.” Simion has been declared a p;ersona non grata in Moldova.
“This model will be tried to be copied and an operation against the will of the citizens of Germany, France and other European Union countries is underway,” the AUR leader warned calling on Romanians to sign the report as “the beginnings of the steps for the return to democracy”.
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