The manipulation of Romanian elections, a lesson for democracies

Lhe Romanian presidential election, organized on Sunday November 24 before being canceled on Friday December 6 by the Constitutional Court in Bucharest, was a nightmare scenario for our liberal democracies. Coming from nowhere, Calin Georgescu, a conspiratorial and pro-Russian candidate – who notably promised to abolish political parties – came first in the first round, after making himself known thanks to a cleverly orchestrated manipulation operation on TikTok.

Despite the opacity surrounding his CV, his relatives and the origin of the funds which financed his campaign, he had a good chance of winning in the second round against a fragile pro-European opponent, before the election be canceled at the last minute due to “electoral process marred by irregularities”. An extremely rare decision in the European Union, but which must be seen in relation to the unprecedented level of doubt which surrounded this election.

For the first time in the social media era, actors most likely “state”according to the Romanian intelligence services, have in fact managed to manipulate TikTok’s algorithms with such efficiency that the videos of the candidate they support managed, in a few weeks, to invade the phones of the 9 million Romanian users of the Chinese network, to make it the ninth trend globally, and to convert tens of millions of virtual views into more than 2 million real voices in a country of 19 million inhabitants.

Of course, the progression of pro-Russian far-right ideas in Romanian public opinion did not wait for TikTok. As elsewhere in the Western world, the cocktail between record inflation, fatigue from the war in Ukraine and a feeling of disengagement has fueled for months a frustration on which a series of nationalist political groups are thriving. But, within this favorable environment, Mr. Georgescu’s specific success was in no way natural.

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