Romania's Constitutional Court does Putin a big favor by annulling an election

Romania has found itself at the centre of a political storm over a decision by its Constitutional Court on the presidential election.

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The first round of the election was held on 24 November and was won by independent candidate Călin Georgescu, widely seen as a pro-Russian politician, with 22.94% of the vote. The result came as a complete surprise, as he had campaigned largely on social media.

The elections were a paradox: the candidates of the two parties that make up the current Romanian government, the Social Democratic Party (PSD, affiliated with the European Socialists) and the National Liberal Party (PNL, a member of the European People’s Party, EPP), did not even make it to the second round, finishing third and fifth respectively. The second round would therefore pit Georgescu against Elena Lasconi of the Union Save Romania (USR), affiliated with the centre-left Renew Europe group.

Yesterday, via its Facebook page, the Constitutional Court of Romania announced the annulment of these elections, a decision that its members have taken unanimously. The paradox is that the same Court on Monday refused to suspend those elections, indicating that the second round would have to be held this Sunday, December 8, 2024. In announcing this decision, the Court ruled out the existence of "fraud in the nature of altering the outcome of the election." Why did it change its mind three days later? At the moment, the judgment has not yet been published in the Monitorul Oficial, so I have not been able to review its content.

Of course, this decision sets a bad precedent and the remedy could be worse than the supposed evil it is trying to fix. In addition to the unusual fact of annulling an election, something that has never happened in Romania, it must be added that the decision was taken by a court that, as in other European countries (such as Spain), is elected by politicians: three of its members are chosen by the President of the Republic, three others are chosen by Parliament and the remaining three by the Senate. The president of the court is subsequently elected by its members.

The PSD and the PNL have dominated Romanian politics for many years, so the members of the tribunal who made this unusual decision owe their positions, to a large extent, to these two parties.

Obviously, what has happened in Romania is not an isolated event. The alliance between the Socialists and the Popular Party is giving rise to alternative parties that respond to the disillusionment of many voters with the progressive and social-democratic consensus created by parties close to the European Socialists and the EPP. Decisions such as the one announced yesterday by the Constitutional Court of Romania only serve to discredit the institutions and increase the distrust of many citizens towards the democratic game, which has been transformed by the majority parties into a kind of party system that is increasingly moving away from democratic approaches.

From this blog I have been denouncing Vladimir Putin's dictatorship and his propaganda in the West for 16 years. No one can accuse me of having even the slightest sympathy for this tyrant and his propagandists. But that does not prevent me from acknowledging that the decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court, instead of curbing Russian influence, will only serve to increase it, by contributing to the campaign of discrediting Western democratic institutions promoted by the Kremlin.

Democracy must be defended by making citizens feel represented, not by suspending elections by a politicized court that owes its composition to precisely two of the parties that were defeated in the first round of the presidential elections on November 24. With its regrettable decision, the Romanian Constitutional Court has done Vladimir Putin a great favor. Hopefully, what happens from now on will be motivated by greater good sense than that shown by this court, because the Romanian people have as many reasons to reject Russian influence as other European peoples who have suffered under Russian imperialism.

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Photo: Curtea Constituțională a României.