Romanians are headed to the polls again and the eyes of the world are on them as they elect a president for a second time.
Sunday’s vote, which follows November’s canceled election, will decide which two candidates — from a field of 11 that includes far-right and anti EU hardliners __ will make it to the runoff on May 18 and win the presidency.
Since the election was canceled five months ago, there has been plenty of electoral and legal drama, including the disqualification of Calin Georgescu whose unlikely win led to the cancellation.
What’s happening?
Romanians already voted on Nov, 24, but the result which saw Russia-friendly outsider Călin Georgescu take a stunning first place was cancelled by the Constitutional Court over allegations of Russian interference. The court ordered fresh elections.
Georgescu was barred from running again, with Romania’s election bureau finding he “violated the very obligation to defend democracy.” He faces six charges of acting to undermine the constitution, promoting anti-Semitic ideas and lying about campaign financing.
Who’s in with a chance?
Of the 11, about four are touted with a chance of making it to the second round. That said, polls completely failed to predict Georgescu’s first-round triumph, so nobody is trust the polls too much.
Crin Antonescu is running as the government candidate, endorsed by the ruling center-left Social Democrats, the center-right National Liberals and the Hungarian minority group.Antonescu who briefly served as interim president in 2012, has not held public office for a decade.
Nicușor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest since 2020, is running as an independent candidate, as is Victor Ponta, Romania’s former Social Democrat prime minister. Ponta, who has a foot in the pro-West and nationalist camps resigned as premier in 2015 amid street protests over a nightclub fire that killed 64 people and was later investigated for corruption but cleared.
When do the results come in?
The first round vote will take place this Sunday, May 4, with polling stations open from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m. Romania’s massive diaspora can vote from Friday to allow time for ballots to be counted.
What’s at stake?
The outcome of the election doesn’t just affect Romania for the next five years. The European Union and NATO are watching nervously and the results could even touch the Russia-Ukraine war.
Romania, which shares a long border with Ukraine, has long been a dependable EU and NATO ally. But if pro-Trump Simion wins he could push back against Brussels, join forces with Hungary and Slovakia and halt military support for Kyiv.
Antonescu, the establishment candidate, and Dan, the Romanian capital’s mayor, are considered more predictable and more mainstream contenders by Brussels. It’s unclear how they’d perform against Simion in a second round.
If Simion wins and Romania veers off its current course, it would join a growing hard-right trend of parties governing Europe including Hungary and Slovakia to Italy, Finland and the Netherlands.
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