A pro-Russian and anti-Semitic candidate surprisingly won the first round of the Romanian presidential election. international

Romania was stunned this Monday by the election victory of a candidate close to the Kremlin with major anti-Semitic and anti-Western declarations. Calin Georgescu, a 62-year-old pro-Russian who sympathizes with Nazi-collaborated Romanian generals of the interwar period, won the first round of the presidential election with 23.94% – more than 2,117,000 votes – after 99.5% of the votes were counted. Claimed. , But getting the head of state will not be so easy. On December 8, in the second round he will face Elena Lasconi, a 52-year-old journalist and centre-right mayor of Cămpulung, a town of 27,000 inhabitants, located 150 kilometers from Bucharest. On Monday morning, Lasconi managed to snatch second place from the election favourite, social democratic candidate and Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. This will be the first time in 35 years that the Social Democratic Party will not contest the second round of presidential elections.

Elena Lasconi came in second place with 19.7% of the votes. But by Monday morning, partial results had handed the seat to Marcel Ciolacu, for whom polls had incorrectly predicted a clear victory. In the end, Lasconi received two percentage points more than the Prime Minister’s 19.5%.

After learning that Lasconi would contest the second round, his campaign team warned via a video: “Happiness comes with a Shock For millions of Romanians.” And he added: “(Calin Georgescu) is a candidate who has the face of Vladimir Putin, he wants us to leave the European Union, he has fascist and anti-Semitic principles.” The campaign team stressed that Lasconi would take the threat seriously.

Voters in the EU’s sixth-largest state by population – about 19 million inhabitants – have shifted toward nationalist formations in recent years as never since the fall of communism nearly 35 years ago.

Georgescu, a staunch religious and nationalist who called the result an “amazing awakening” of the Romanian people, led an intense campaign on the social network TikTok, calling for Romania to reduce imports, support farmers, and increase domestic production of food and energy. Was called for.

Criticism of NATO and America

The pro-Russian candidate argues that the EU and NATO do not adequately represent Romanian interests and affirms that Russia’s war in Ukraine, with which it shares a 650-kilometre land border, is manipulated by US military companies. Has gone. He has praised Russian culture and described Putin as “a man who loves his country”. He also admires the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, as he assures that he knows how to negotiate at the international level.

Russian state press agencies celebrated Georgescu’s result. TASS highlighted that he is “reserved about Romania’s membership in NATO and has discreetly pressed for normalization (of relations) with Russia,” while another Russian agency RIA Novosti indicated that he There are candidates in alliance with Moscow.

When he realized the second round would be with the Prime Minister, Lasconi called for vigilance: “There is great attention in all polling stations, every vote counts. “It is necessary to stay there and protect the votes of the Romanian people.”