This Sunday, November 24, the first round of the Romanian presidential election took place. At the end of this, the pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu came first with 22.94% of the votes, according to the latest estimates. A somewhat unexpected result for the 62-year-old politician.
A historic victory that calls for another? This Sunday, the presidential candidate in Romania Calin Georgescu struck a major blow by winning the first round of the election with 22.94% of the votes. A first in a country which seemed to be facing the rise of the far right, unlike some of its neighbors.
At 62 years old, Calin Georgescu has become the major opposition figure in Romania. In 2011, the name of the native of Bucharest, who in his youth followed a course at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in the Romanian capital, was proposed for a potential position of Prime Minister, which he will refuse. In 2020, this time it is the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR) which is trying to make the university professor its head of the gondola.
But it was in 2022 that the political figure, who notably held various positions within the country's Ministry of the Environment, became more talked about by creating a controversy. And this by qualifying Ion Antonescu, the main person responsible for the Shoah in Romania, and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, founder and leader of the “Legion of Archangel Michael”, an openly anti-Semitic and homophobic organization, as “heroes of the nation”.
The local prosecutor's office then opened an investigation against him for “promoting the cult of people guilty of genocide and war crimes”.
Calin Georgescu openly criticizes Romania's membership in the European Union and NATO, believing that the nation has been “economically neutralized.” He points to the notion of “erasure of national identity”, “DNA which ensures the immunity of the nation and the Romanian spirit”, according to him.
During the 2024 electoral campaign, it is via the social network TikTok that his voice will particularly resonate in the country, by radically positioning himself as pro-Russian. A particularly divisive and strategic position as Romania shares an important border with Ukraine.
It remains to be seen whether Calin Georgescu and the far right will confirm their rise to power on December 8 during the second round of the Romanian presidential election.
