GENEVA, March 17. /TASS/. A foreign entity did indeed meddle in Romania’s presidential election in November 2024, but it was not Russia, George Simion, the leader of the opposition Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) said.
"There is no reliable evidence of Russian interference, but foreign interference did take place. It came from Brussels, Paris, the globalist elite that looks upon Romania as a pawn in their geopolitical games. It was not about defending democracy but about ensuring that only approved candidates take part in the election," he said in an interview with Switzerland’s Die Weltwoche magazine.
According to Simion, the May election rerun will not be merely about choosing a new president but about "sparing Romania from being subjected to foreign interests and the corrupt elite which doesn’t represent" its people.
"We are witnessing the end of democracy in Europe as we know it. That is why we are struggling not only for Romania but for all the European nations which still believe in sovereignty, democracy, and people’s right to choose their leaders," the Romanian politician added.
After Romania’s Constitutional Court banned former presidential candidate Calin Georgescu from running for president, two parties backing him, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians and the Party of Young People, came up with a new campaign strategy. Their leaders, George Simion and Ana Maria Gavrila, respectively, agreed to file documents to register them as candidates and if both are registered one of them will withdraw.
On November 24, 2024, Romania held the first round of its presidential election, in which Georgescu received a majority of votes. On December 6, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the results and ordered a new election. This decision followed the declassification of documents by Romanian intelligence services, which revealed, among other things, that Georgescu had illegally financed his campaign and that Russia had allegedly carried out some "hybrid actions" against Romania. The government upheld the Constitutional Court’s decision and set the dates for a presidential rerun for May 4 and May 18 of this year.