Romania begins recount due to accusations of irregularities against the winning candidate

Romania's Central Electoral Bureau has begun a court-ordered recount of all ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election, following accusations that the winner, Kelin Georgescu, illegally used tiktok to boost his campaign.

The Constitutional Court ordered the recount on November 28 after officials from the Supreme National Defense Council demanded that the authorities take immediate action, saying that Kelin Georgescu had received preferential treatment by the social media platform, Radio Liberty reported.

TikTok denied any wrongdoing. On November 26, the Central Election Commission of Romania finished counting the votes of the voters who took part in the voting for the new president of the country in the first round, with Kelin Georgescu, an ultranationalist and Euroskeptic, getting the most votes.

He was supported by 22.94% of voters, or 2 million 120 thousand 401 Romanians. Elena-Valerica Lasconi is in second place, supported by 1 million 772.5 thousand voters, i.e. 19.17% of the participants.

Kelin Georgescu is a non-partisan candidate who was previously a member of the nationalist Alliance for the Unification of Romanians. He is the former Executive Director of the UN Global Sustainable Development Index Institute in Geneva and Vaduz. From 2010 to 2012, he served as a Special Rapporteur at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He is sometimes called a pro-Russian politician in the media.

The Romanian service of Radio Liberty, citing its own sources, reported that the Constitutional Court, which was initially supposed to confirm the results of the first round of elections on November 29, will do so on December 2 after the recount is completed.

Without outside support, the campaign of Kelin Georgescu relied heavily on TikTok, where his account received 1.6 million likes and where he posted videos of himself attending church, practicing judo, running on a track, and appearing on podcasts.

Кирило Бойко