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Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau on Sunday blocked Russia-aligned, far-right candidate Călin Georgescu from running in the country’s May’s presidential election.
The bureau said it would post the reasons for its decision later, brushing off objections from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that the firebrand NATO skeptic should be permitted to stand.
The Digi24 news service said the electoral bureau had voted against allowing Georgescu, the frontrunner, to proceed by a margin of 10 to 4. An appeal can be submitted within 24 hours, with the Constitutional Court obliged to rule by Wednesday.
Georgescu came out of nowhere to win the first round of the presidential vote last November, partly on the back of a wildly successfully TikTok campaign.
But the Constitutional Court annulled his victory after an alleged Russian operation was seen as having influenced the result.
The Trump administration, itself aligning with the Kremlin on core foreign policy objectives, has supported the idea of allowing Georgescu to compete.
Trump’s senior adviser Elon Musk reacted immediately to Sunday’s news from Romania with a tweet saying: “This is crazy.”
Georgescu also tried to play up what he claimed were the international implications of the election bureau’s decision: “If democracy in Romania falls, the entire democratic world will fall!” he wrote on X. “This is just the beginning. It’s that simple! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!”
This article is being updated.
