Not long after sparking outrage inside and outside the country by barring right-wing frontrunner Calin Georgescu from running in May’s presidential election, Romania has barred another populist from the contest, attributing the decision to the candidate's supposedly unacceptable policy stances and "making declarations "contrary to democratic values."
Romania's electoral commission on Saturday announced that Diana Sosoaca would be banned from competing for the country's presidency. That news is troubling enough on its face, but the Central Election Bureau's rationale makes the development all the more chilling: Sosoaca is unfit for office because she has publicly voiced opposition to Romania's memberships in the European Union and NATO.
The court said Sosoaca's stances are disqualifying because EU and NATO memberships are explicitly acknowledged in Romania's constitution. However, constitutions can be changed via legal processes, and any rational champion of democratic principles should think political candidates should be free to advocate for changes.
Like Georgescu, Sosoaca has also been condened for advocating for friendly relations with Russia. Last fall, she was banned from the November ballot on similar grounds. “I am proof that we do not live in a democracy," the morbidly obese Sosoaca said on Facebook this weekend as she promised to appeal the latest decision against her.
A 49-year-old European MP and leader of the nationalist S.O.S. Romania Party, Sosoaca has struck Trump-like tones in her oratory. When she filed her candidacy, she told supporters she was on a mission to "make Europe and Romania great again." Following the election commission's ruling, she posted a public letter to Trump, declaring that “the democratic system has been destroyed and the elections have already been rigged.”
On a positive note, another right-wing candidate managed to survive the election bureau gauntlet: George Simion, who leads the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), will appear on the May 4 ballot -- for now, at least. The 38-year-old is being investigated for having allegedly incited violence after Georgescu was banned from the race. Like other nationalist party's in Europe, Simion's AUR party has been surging.
Simion himself came in fourth in the now-discarded December balloting. This weekend, he condemned the exclusion of his would-be competitor, Sosoaca, saying the move “represents a further blow to Romanian democracy and a serious violation of fundamental rights and freedoms.”
Back in December, Romania's Constitutional Court declared it had "to annul the entire electoral process for the election of the President of Romania… to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process." The 62-year old Georgescu -- who is also a NATO and EU skeptic -- had come out on top in November's first round of voting. That shock outcome that left political opponents scrambling and claiming Russian intelligence was behind the massive and sudden rise in his popularity. Winning the presidency requires receiving more than 50% of the vote; Georgescu had promising prospects of clearing that hurdle in the December run-off that never happened.
Last month, Georgescu was arrested and questioned as he faced Orwellian allegations of disseminating "false information" and "incitement to actions against the constitutional order." Upon his release, he was forbidden from appearing on mass media or creating social media accounts.
Sadly, the Romanian leftist establishment has adopted the twisted, dishonest philosophy of its US and Western European counterparts -- "we have to destroy Our Democracy to save it."
