Chaos broke out on the streets of Bucharest on Sunday evening as supporters of presidential frontrunner Călin Georgescu reacted with rage after Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred him from running again following the annulled November elections in which he won the first round of voting.
The Romanian capital descended into violence as supporters of populist-nationalist Călin Georgescu clashed with police, threw stones, launched fireworks, and set fires in the heart of Bucharest in response to the decision by judges and representatives of political parties at the Central Electoral Bureau to prohibit the independent candidate from running in the next presidential election.
Protesters congregated near the headquarters of the Bureau, and by Romania’s central bank. Among the sometimes violent protests a TV truck vehicle belinging to a national broadcaster was tipped over.
Romanian broadcaster Digi24 reports that the agency ruled, by a margin of 10-to-4, that Georgescu had failed to “respect the rules of the electoral procedure” and “violated the obligation to defend democracy. ”
The decision came in the wake of Georgescu being arrested and charged last month with, among other accusations, the “incitement to actions against the constitutional order,” the “communication of false information,” making “false statements”, and the “initiation or establishment of an organization with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character”.
Georgescu rose to global prominence in November when he secured a surprise victory in the first round of voting in the presidential election. Yet, he was never allowed to advance to the second round as the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the elections amid claims that Russia had interfered in the race on his behalf.
Romanian gendarmes in riot gear walk past a fire as they face protesters amid clashes during a demonstration near the Central Electoral Bureau in Bucharest on March 9, 2025, after the electoral bureau rejected Georgescu’s candidacy for the re-run of last year’s annulled presidential election. (Photo by DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP via Getty Images)
The independent politician has been accused of being pro-Russian and anti-NATO. However, Georgescu has asserted that he is a “Romania First” candidate similar to Donald Trump in the United States and that he believes that good relations with Moscow and an end to the war in Ukraine would benefit his country.
Following the decision by the Central Electoral Bureau to bar him from running again in the next presidential election, Georgescu wrote: “Another direct blow to the heart of democracy around the world!”
“I have only one message: if the democracy in Romania will fall, the whole democratic world will fall! This is just the beginning. It’s just that simple! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!”
The Romanian politician was not alone in this assessment. Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini described the ruling as a “Soviet-style Euro-coup.”
“First they annul — with the polls open — the elections he was winning, then they arrest him, then they even exclude him from the elections for fear that he will win. Rather than ‘rearm Europe’, we must re-found it to defend Democracy,” Salvini wrote on X.
The decision was also criticised by U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who remarked: “Leftists love kicking their opponents off of ballots. Where have we seen that before?”. Elon Musk called the development, in his usually austere way, “crazy”.
Frontrunner of Romania’s Annulled Election Georgescu Indicted Just Days After Vance Democracy Warninghttps://t.co/EMUieoCiB5
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 26, 2025
