The leader of Romania’s largest far-right party will be allowed to take part in May’s presidential election after the previous frontrunner, whom he backed, was barred from the race.
The country’s electoral bureau on Saturday cleared the candidacy of George Simion, head of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, or AUR. Should anyone challenge the ruling, Simion would need final approval from the Constitutional Court.
“We passed the electoral bureau and now we need to see if we also manage to pass the top court so we can return to democracy,” Simion said on his Facebook page.
Simion, 38, made the last-minute decision to join the 4 May presidential re-run after Calin Georgescu was excluded by the electoral bureau because of what it deemed to be his extremist and anti-democratic stances. Also on Saturday, the electoral bureau rejected the candidacy of Diana Sosoaca, a controversial pro-Russian politician, for the May elections, according to Digi 24.
Sosoaca, a lawmaker in the European Parliament with extremist views, was also barred by the Constitutional Court from last year’s now-cancelled presidential vote. At the time, the decision was unprecedented and viewed negatively by both politicians and Romanian society in general.
Just weeks later, the Black Sea nation was thrown into political turmoil as the shocking first round victory of Georgescu, previously a fringe candidate, raised allegations of Russian meddling and prompted the top court to cancel the elections and order a repeat. That ruling later drew criticism from US Vice President JD Vance, who said in February that it was based on “flimsy” evidence as he questioned Romania’s democratic institutions.
“Today we have a divided country with members of the same families who don’t speak to each other because of different views over what happened,” Simion told his supporters on Friday. “We need to heal and become more united and that’s why the elections in May are the last chance to pick the candidate that people want and not one picked by the system.”
Georgescu has so far refrained from endorsing any of the other candidates but Simion said he has his support, along with Anamaria Gavrila who leads the smaller far-right party POT, to “take the sovereigntist movement further.”
The court’s cancellation of the vote last year was unpopular with most Romanians and galvanised anti-establishment sentiment to the benefit of the far-right. Polls suggest that Georgescu, who denied wrongdoing and has presented himself as a victim of elite intrigue, would have received around 40% of the vote in May. That would have given him a real chance of becoming president of Romania.
Simion has expressed more moderate views than Georgescu, who’s praised Russian President Vladimir Putin. The AUR leader said several times that he supports Romania’s membership of the EU and Nato, of whose member states the country shares the longest border with Ukraine.
Still, Simion’s bid to tap into disillusionment with Romania’s mainstream and keep the far-right surge alive now faces competition from new candidates, including Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan and former Prime Minister Victor Ponta.
Simion came fourth in last year’s cancelled election and is now under investigation for a statement he made on 9 March, apparently threatening violence against officials from the electoral bureau. He says his words were misinterpreted and denies any wrongdoing.
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