Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election today, just two days before the second round was scheduled to take place. The decision comes after declassified Romanian intelligence reports alleged that Russia had run a social media influence campaign to promote Calin Georgescu, a far-right populist who notched a surprise victory in the first round of voting two weeks ago. (AP)
The court ruling today is just the latest twist in Romania’s “election marathon”—three consecutive Sundays of voting that also included parliamentary elections this past weekend. The first twist had been Georgescu’s victory in the first round, as the ultranationalist independent candidate had been relatively unknown in Romania’s political landscape and won a far bigger vote share than any polls had predicted.
Of course, amid a populist wave across many democracies, this is far from the first case of a populist candidate seemingly coming from nowhere to outperform expectations in an election. But Georgescu’s victory and campaign style raised a number of red flags in Romania, most notably because he had essentially only campaigned on TikTok, claiming that he didn’t have a budget for anything else. Moreover, his videos didn’t spread widely until two weeks before the first round.
Then, on Wednesday, declassified reports from multiple Romanian intelligence agencies alleged that a coordinated social media campaign orchestrated by a “state actor” heavily implied to be Russia had been responsible for the massive boost to Georgescu’s visibility. According to the documents, a sleeper network had used Telegram to coordinate the influence campaign, which included paying social media influencers to promote Georgescu. The reports drew parallels to Russian influence campaigns seen in Moldova and Ukraine.
If indeed a Russian influence campaign was responsible for Georgescu’s victory, it would seem to mark the first time that Moscow’s efforts to meddle in Western democracies had a meaningful effect on an electoral outcome. Over the past decade, Russia’s influence campaigns have largely been based on sowing divisions among voters in an effort to benefit the Kremlin’s preferred candidate—as Moscow did for Donald Trump in the past three U.S. presidential elections, for instance. But so far they haven’t had a measurable impact. The strategy in Romania was notably different, using a network of accounts to directly endorse the most pro-Russian candidate. It was far simpler, and it appears to have been far more effective.
But regardless of its effectiveness, Russian election interference raises the same thorny issues in Romania as it does elsewhere. For one, there’s the question that Western democracies have been grappling with more generally for social media: how to defend against online harms, like external influence campaigns, without stifling free speech. And even if Russia had helped Georgescu—whether with his knowledge, and therefore illegally, or unbeknownst to him—get his far-right, ultranationalist message out, more than 2 million Romanian voters still clearly responded positively to what they saw. That’s a broader issue that won’t simply be addressed by limiting influence campaigns.
Nearly 20 Kenyan police officers serving in Haiti have submitted letters of resignation over the past two months due to pay delays and poor conditions, Reuters reports. Kenya deployed around 400 officers to Haiti earlier this year to lead a Multinational Security Support mission that was supposed to comprise more than 2,500 officers to aid Haitian police in fighting criminal gangs.
