Bucharest, Romania – Romania is heading in direction of its most polarised presidential election within the nation’s democratic historical past, with voters braced for the battle between a right-wing populist and a centrist technocrat on Sunday.
Latest polls present the race is shut, with just a few share factors separating the 2 candidates – George Simion, chief of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and Nicusor Dan, an unbiased and the present mayor of Bucharest, the place 25 p.c of the nation’s 19 million residents reside.
Simion aligns himself with populist leaders resembling america’s Donald Trump and Hungary’s anti-immigrant chief Viktor Orban.
The vote comes at a essential time for Romania, a member of the European Union and NATO that borders Ukraine.
Western nations are presently struggling to agree on help for Kyiv – with Washington’s backing for the war-torn nation unsure, a technique to take care of the fallout from elevated US tariffs, and on take care of Russia because it continues to wage warfare and scold European heads of state.
The 38-year-old Simion secured 40 p.c of the vote in a primary spherical on Could 4. Dan, a former mathematician, adopted with about 20 p.c.
The primary spherical got here within the wake of the controversial annulment of Romania’s October 2024 presidential election, through which ultranationalist underdog candidate Calin Georgescu superior to the ultimate. The constitutional courtroom cited causes of irregular financing and suspected overseas interference.
Simion has promised to redo the second spherical of the 2024 election if the Romanian public so needs.
A supporter of banned candidate Georgescu, Simion is more likely to have swept up a lot of his base within the first spherical and has spoken of selling Georgescu to the function of prime minister.
“After the annulment, fully abusive and unfounded, of the [2024] elections, Romanians have seen the ugliest face of this deep state that decides past the desire of the folks,” Simion instructed Al Jazeera.
A divisive determine, he’s banned from coming into Ukraine and Moldova. He has beforehand referred to as to revive Romania’s outdated borders. He’s additionally sceptical about sending extra army help to Ukraine. He has organised nationalist rallies up to now, in addition to demonstrations towards corruption. He based AUR in 2020.
“I’ve promised that the very first thing I’ll do as president is to unseal the recordsdata on the annulment of the elections. To do justice, we should know the reality,” mentioned Simion.
Romania’s 2024 election fallout earned the nation criticism from high-profile populists who claimed free speech was being threatened. US Vice President JD Vance condemned the annulment on the Munich Safety Convention, saying the ruling was based mostly on the “flimsy suspicions of an intelligence company”.
Political analyst Anamaria-Nicoleta Ciobanu outlined Simion as a “chameleonic chief” who started his profession as a reasonable, however has since shifted in direction of the exhausting proper.
“Most of Simion’s voters will not be extremists; they’re solely disenchanted in how the Romanian political and financial house seems”, she mentioned.
Simion maintains an official stance of neutrality on the Ukraine warfare, however voters are usually drawn to his anti-establishment message.
“The institution, made by outdated socialist and liberal events, which have been in energy for 35 years, has all the time talked about making certain stability. This stability has turned out to be not simply an phantasm, however an enormous lie. Romania has been not too long ago downgraded to a hybrid regime,” Simion instructed Al Jazeera.
In 2024, Romania was moved down 12 locations to quantity 72 in a Democracy Index printed by The Economist, falling out of the class “flawed democracy” and into “hybrid regime”, a combination of authoritarianism and democracy.
Regardless of committing to staying in each the EU and NATO, Simion is essential of Europe.
“The federalist super-state that the globalist left is creating will not be what European residents need,” he mentioned.
Final week, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu from the Social gathering of European Socialists (PSD) resigned following his authorities coalition’s failure to safe their candidate, Crin Antonescu, within the run-off. The failure was one thing of a political earthquake – the primary time within the nation’s 35-year post-revolutionary historical past {that a} main occasion has not reached the ultimate.
With Ciolacu gone, the incoming president can have the ability to appoint a brand new prime minister.
If that determine fails to win parliamentary approval, Romania may face snap parliamentary elections.
Dan referred to as Prime Minister Ciolacu’s resignation “lengthy overdue”, in an interview with Al Jazeera.
Dan constructed his fame as an anticorruption crusader, based and later walked away from the Save Romania Union occasion in 2015, which he referred to as the “first large-scale nationwide occasion arguing for profound reform and modernisation of the political institution in Romania”.
Drawing most of his help from Romania’s city centres, Dan positions himself as a bulwark towards the rising tide of populism.
“I’m now operating as an unbiased, particularly as a result of Romanians are distrustful of conventional occasion constructions and their vested pursuits”, Dan acknowledged.
Impartial candidates don’t obtain state-subsidised marketing campaign funding. Dan’s staff raised 600,000 euros ($670,000) to help the marketing campaign.
After trailing Simion by almost 20 p.c within the first spherical, he wants a big dose of help to win Sunday’s run-off.
“I sympathise totally with voters feeling left behind,” Dan instructed Al Jazeera. Final yr’s election scandal confirmed Romanians to be “torn between concern and hope, between turning inward and shifting ahead”, he mentioned.
“Romanians expressed a deep need for honesty, competence, and a management that respects each our European identification and our nationwide dignity,” he mentioned.
Dan’s presidential priorities embody tackling tax evasion, fraud, drug trafficking, and creating situations for Romania’s giant diaspora of as much as 5 million folks, about 25 p.c of Romanian residents, to return house.
Within the first spherical, a file variety of diaspora Romanians turned out to vote, up 24 p.c from final yr. Of 966,000 voters, 60 p.c supported Simion, whereas 25 p.c supported Dan.
Simion voter Sherghei, a 47-year-old Moldova-born Romanian citizen in Norway, made his alternative clear on Could 4.
“I like how Simion fights with the world, collectively at protests,” he instructed Al Jazeera. “The diaspora is uninterested in working overseas, all of us hope for a change, we need to go house.”
In accordance with political analyst Ciobanu, Romania’s worldwide fame is at stake.
“George Simion is perceived as intolerant, and that may have an effect on our nation’s picture, overseas affairs and financial system even earlier than he acts on his discourse.”