Is Romania Opting for Change?

Sergiu CEBAN

In the first round of the Romanian presidential election, the non-party candidate Calin Georgescu, whom the ruling class is now hastily defaming as an extremist and “Putin admirer”, won a sensational victory

Who is mister Georgescu? Perhaps, this question started Monday morning in most European chancelleries. In the first round of the presidential election in neighboring Romania, the non-party candidate Calin Georgescu, little known to the general public, sensationally won with 22.93% of the vote. He was joined in the second round by the leader of the Save Romania Union, Elena Lasconi, with 19.16% of the vote. Public biographical data do not reveal anything particularly important about the winner. He is an ordinary researcher and mid-level professional who coordinates work on individual national documents. At the same time, they tried to nominate him several times for the post of prime minister, but the idea failed due to the specific attitude of Georgescu and his views on Romanian public policy, which do not coincide with the mainstream in the high offices of Bucharest. For example, he actively advocates traditional values and criticizes NATO, as membership in this alliance, in his opinion, cannot ensure the country’s security. He also advocates normalization of relations with Russia and does not support the US military aid to Ukraine. For this reason, the pro-government and pro-Western media in Romania is painstakingly molding the image of Georgescu as a marginal extremist, who is close to the leaders and ideologists of the first half of the last century. And, of course, every democratic election in the West nowadays entails the factor of “the Kremlin’s hand” and “Putinists”, to which the winner of the first round was instantly labelled. In his first address to the counter-candidate Elena Lasconi, Georgescu recommended her not to get too excited about second place, because “the people are extremely dissatisfied with what Romanian politicians have done in all the previous years”. Some kind of a transparent hint that Lasconi herself was part of this political system. Confident of his victory in the second round, Georgescu promised voters to “make history instead of politics”. Elena Lasconi is indeed a character better known to the Romanian electorate. Since June of this year, she has been the president of the liberal party Save Romania Union, while she holds the post of the mayor of Campulung. She started building her political career after 25 years in journalism. By the way, while heading a liberal political organization, she voted in favor of the traditional family in the 2018 referendum, which she herself admitted. Addressing voters after the vote count, Lasconi appealed to the fact that Romania is trapped between the past and the future, at risk of falling back into Russia’s sphere of influence. She publicly accused her opponent of sympathizing with Putin and of wanting to pull the country out of the European economic space and NATO. And she did not fail to predict that because of Georgescu’s nationalist views, Bucharest could find itself in international isolation if the idea of neutrality is promoted. Well, it’s time to save Romania. Does that ring a bell? The first conclusion that can be drawn in the aftermath is that the ruling class has thoroughly driven voters crazy almost all over the country. The local media is bewildered at how Romania could find itself in an even weaker situation than the political regime in Moldova. Against this background, the first street pickets against the victory of Georgescu have already taken place in the capital. The systemic political forces suffered their first ‘losses’. Thus, the incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu was forced to resign from the post of PSD chairman. Former Defense Minister Nicolae Ciuca also announced his resignation as leader of the National Liberal Party. The world reaction to the results of the first stage of the Romanian presidential election is quite different. Of course, the clearly manifested sovereigntist trend in a certain sense matches with what happened in the United States, but Brussels was definitely unenthusiastic about the interim results. The likelihood that Orban and Fico will have another close comrade is hardly appealing to the EU left-liberal political elites. For Kyiv, a potential internal political reversal in the neighboring country is perhaps an even more serious challenge than Moldova’s possible return to the Kremlin’s zone of influence. Romania is, in fact, Ukraine’s key partner in logistics, maritime links and agricultural exports. From a military point of view, the neighboring state is an important element of the strategic rear and a concentration of various repair bases and hubs that ensure uninterrupted supplies of weapons, equipment and ammunition. Moscow has so far demonstrated a restrained position, pretending that it does not know the favorite in the presidential race. It is clear that they will not make any evaluative statements at the moment, so as not to do any harm. However, for all its expressed distance, it is obvious that Russia has always placed its bets on such leaders and nonparty forces that are capable of becoming a destabilizing factor for the EU. For Moldova, although it is more correct to say for Maia Sandu and PAS, the victory of Calin Georgescu is a disaster, which further worsens the situation of the regime, which counts on the support of Bucharest and Brussels in the conditions of unpredictable policies of the new US administration. The speaker of the parliament, Igor Grosu, has already hastened to question the prospects of cooperation with Georgescu if he is elected president. While politicians, especially Romanian ones, are trying to cope with the post-election situation, we will try to draw some conclusions. Both Moldovan and Romanian elections show us either a severe crisis of sociological science or its total subordination to political goals. It seems that experts of public sentiments can no longer claim to the former objectivity. And social attitudes in Romania have obviously changed a lot, and in order to grasp them, new methods and analyses of modern forms of mass communication are required, from which we can safely exclude the classical media. If we work in the old format, we end up with elites who have lost touch with the people and who cannot see beyond their political contours. The voting results loudly signal that the Romanian society wants radical changes in the state governance. Although it is not a question of any break with the European Union, NATO and the desire to leave the alliance of Western democracies, there is a great deal of accumulated dissatisfaction with the course pursued over the past 20 years by Romanian parties and the political class as a whole. It is quite natural that the Romanian authorities were very distressed with the victory of a non-party candidate, which is why the reaction to him was so aggressive. Although in fact there is nothing so extraordinary in his political programme. The main success of the Georgescu phenomenon is that he not only speaks openly about the problems of the state, including those that are not visible to the common citizen, but also offers practical solutions in a language that is understandable to the public. Moreover, he does not dwell on geopolitics. Lastly, the past elections have become an illustrative example of how society can wish for changes and demand them from the authorities. This directly concerns us, because in Moldova the demand for a normal domestic and foreign policy course, which actually meets the interests of the state and society, has long matured and continues to grow.