Romania at a Crossroads: Can Its Frail Democracy Endure the Season of Discontent?
A political earthquake hit Romanian society a few weeks ago when the first tour of the presidential race ended with Călin Georgescu in first place. A no-name two months earlier, the candidate has taken mainstream media and politics by surprise. „We are not carrying out a political campaign, but a communion between ourselves and God”, he declared after finding out the results.
An open admirer of fascist movements and with a mystical rhetoric, Georgescu was projected to win the second round of the elections with a comfortable margin. However, a second shock overtook the country when the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections. The whole cycle will have to start over – at the earliest in Spring 2025 – but no date has been set, nor do we know if Georgescu will be able to participate.
Although a victory of the far-right has been avoided, this is not in any way a victory of democracy. It may result in a different ending, but public trust in the democratic institutions will be tarnished nonetheless. Moreover, traditional parties do not seem to have learnt anything from this. Rather, instead of more democracy, they lean on reducing it. Instead of promising more social rights, they offer austerity.
In the end, the best ”accomplice” for fascism could actually prove to be the so-called liberal and democratic forces. Not intentionally, but through their actions. By undermining democratic institutions, suppressing press freedom or implementing unpopular neoliberal policies, you can hardly make the far-right’s job any easier.
How Poverty Fuels Extremism
There have been many attempts in trying to explain the unexpected victory of Georgescu. Most of them relied heavily on Tik Tok propaganda and foreign intervention. And, while there are some merits to them, they are not enough in understanding the situation. Political and economical elites prefer this narrative as it serves them best: since the cause is external, it means they have done nothing wrong. Therefore, there is no need for change or compromise.
Only a few, outside mainstream media, have offered a materialist explanation. As history tells us, extremism needs fertile ground in order to grow. And what soil is better than the one plagued by poverty, inequality and general discontent? However shocking the result of the elections, tension had been in fact brewing for a long time.
For years, politicians and media have praised the „economic miracle” the country has gone through. But generic and average income indicators do not depict the wide inequality and poverty that lingered on. While big cities have prospered, rural areas and small deindustrialised cities have been left behind.
Some have emigrated, but soon discovered that working in the west is no promised land either. Not surprising, the Romanian diaspora always voted anti-establishment in the last few elections. The more unqualified and exploited, the more likely to cast their vote of protest.
Back home, while the average wage has grown considerably, 1 in 3 employees were still working on minimum wage in September 2023* (the share has dropped only because of a legal gimmick from the government). It is estimated that someone living in Romania would need 800 euros for a decent standard of living. The minimum wage is only 475 euros.
Also, cities such as Bucharest or Cluj have seen some of the biggest rises in rent on the continent in the last few years. No wonder Romania is the country with the highest percentage of in-work poverty (15%) and poverty and risk of exclusion (32%). At the same time, Romanians have worked the longest hours in the EU, second only to Greece.
The Intersection of Poverty, Business Interests, and Far-Right Ideology in Romania
What else are the underprivileged to believe, if not that hard work fails to deliver rewards? Or that the system is rigged against them and in favor of the elites? Not all that voted for Georgescu adhere to the far right ideology, but it is clear that most of them have casted a vote of spite against the establishment.
It is no surprise then to see where he performed best. Almost half (45%) of his voters are from rural areas and small cities, the most affected by the transition to capitalism. Also, he had much more success with those with only primary or secondary education, much less with those who went to college. And, surprisingly or not, he performed best with the youngest voters (18-24 years old)
It is also true that the local far-right is intertwined with the interests of Romanian businesses. Local capital, struggling to compete with global capital, seeks stronger representation to shield itself from foreign competitors and promote its interests. While far-right parties praise local businesses, Georgescu at times criticises corporate greed, resource theft by multinationals and even neoliberalism. He decries the decline of local industry and agriculture, going hand in hand with a spiritual decline.
Of course, his criticism of globalist capitalism – on the rare occasions he does so – is not pronounced from a materialist or in any sense leftist perspective. Rather than higher wages, better schools or hospitals, his promises revolve around tax cuts and supporting local companies. His vision for the country, although vague, is a „petty-bourgeois utopia” as Vladimir Bortun has called it, with small ecological agricultural enterprises.
Far-right parties, such as AUR, are also riding the wave with promises such as giving everyone a house for only 35.000 euros or raising the minimum wage to 1000 euros. How would this huge spending work in tandem with tax cuts is still a mystery. Still, the strategy pays out in the end only because the government refuses to address the socio-economic problems.
Besides the impoverished and the local businesses, the far-right also gathers votes through their religious or reactionary rhetoric. Deeply religious societies going through modernization and change too fast often develop strong counter reactions. It is unclear for the moment how much support he gathered from religious organisations.
In conclusion, lacking any real leftist alternative, all the economic factors and the use of nationalism, the return to the idealized village and New Age mysticism, have brought Georgescu over 2 million votes.
The Establishment’s Stubbornness and Apathy in the Face of Discontent
Have the traditional parties learned anything from this experience? It does not seem so, since there has not been any major change in their strategy. Social-democrats limited their policies to raising the minimum wage and salaries in the public sector from time to time. Parties on the right instead decided to push neoliberal policies even further.
Ilie Bolojan, often named as a potential future prime-minister from the right, is a long supporter of austerity, tax cuts and personnel reduction from the public sector. Elena Lasconi, just days before her face-off with Georgescu in the second tour, thought that a good strategy to win disenfranchised voters would be to have a press conference… with the biggest employers’ association in the country. All while maintaining the plan for the partial privatisation of the healthcare system.
Traditional parties are in the eyes of the public the main culprits for the current situation. However, faced with a tsunami of anti-establishment vote for the far-right, they seem more tone-deaf than ever before. Romania is by no means a nanny state, but a weakened state with public services suffering from underfunding.
Another reason for the surprising result is also that the two biggest parties, social-democrat and national-liberals, decided to form a grand coalition government. One of the two parties would normally be in the opposition, collecting popular discontent, but this was no longer the case. The unsatisfied would now vote for the far-right.
They also decided to subsidise the media with millions of euros in order to shelter the government from any real criticism. All this concentration of power and dissimulation from the media only infuriated the voters more. Now, the perception was that there is no democratic game anymore. Only the „System” that controls everything against the anti-establishment far-right.
It is thus hard to understand the „new” strategy for self-defined pro-European parties: forming a national unity government and having only one common candidate for the presidential race. This will only galvanize the public to vote against the establishment.
Saving democracy with anti-democratic measures
Faced with a possible victory of Georgescu in the second tour, the Constitutional Court decided to annul the elections. A few days before the decision, a series of declassified documents stated that a whole campaign of disinformation and support for Călin Georgescu was carried out from what seemed to be a state actor: Russia.
Several photos showed that Georgescu is surrounded by several former Romanian mercenaries of the French Foreign Legion, fascist sympathizers and, more relevant, former leading figures of different secret services. The photographs were sent to the press from an anonymous mail address. Although not dated, they seemed to be secretly taken in the span of the last 3 years.
One particular photo was of peculiar interest for the media: Georgescu standing at the same table with Horațiu Potra. Potra is a former mercenary for the French Foreign Legion who was arrested among 20 others on the night of 7 December in Bucharest. Sources say that they had a list of journalists and politicians to be targeted and that their plan was to intervene in case of public protests against Georgescu. He was released soon after, however.
Seeing the photos, Georgescu was evidently under the close observation of the secret services over the years, since they were the ones who most probably sent the photos. How is it then that the Romanian state could be caught off-guard? If this is the hand of Russian meddling, then how could it be carried out „secretly” if Georgescu was closely watched?
The truth is that the declassified documents are superficial at best. It does not provide any concrete proof of foreign involvement, only deductions and suppositions. It’s not that it would not be true – Russia is intervening in many elections, it would be absurd to presume Romania would be an exception. The problem is the sheer incompetence of secret services to identify threats – as opposed to their Moldavian counterparts who did a much more thorough job at identifying and describing Russian intervention.
There may also be another complementary explanation. Some interpret it as an in-fight between different factions of the Romanian secret services: the more nationalist and the more western oriented ones. With the nationalist branch being the main local supporter of far-right parties and Georgescu. Obscure in-fighting may also explain why the secret services offered so little information on the case – to keep a low profile. At the same time, to divert attention to the danger of foreign intervention and would-be fascist agitators. And this leads to another problem.
Militarising democracy for democracy’s sake
Romania is maybe the last NATO country that still has a militarised secret service. And with the most members and with the biggest budget in the EU. Also, in the last 10 years, almost every domain of the government has come to be included in the sphere of national security, from national defense to corruption, to healthcare, education and even cultural patrimony. This means that secret services and military structures have a right to intervene in the interest of ”protecting the nation”.
This continuous expansion of the concept of national security, explained by researcher Marius Ghincea here, in his opinion, blurs the lines between civil and military control and is a danger to democracy.
What this means is that a heavy militarised state doesn’t regard democratic rules or freedom of expression in as much high esteem as one normally would. Military hierarchy does not go well with the bickering of a multi-party democracy. One annulled election may be the exceptional measure of today, but may be the rule of tomorrow.
Seeing the situation worsening, Romanian elites may consider using the threat of the war to justify the reduction of democracy. Closing news sites arbitrarily for disinformation, without any judicial procedures, already has a precedent in the pandemic. Wouldn’t a war at the borders be enough reason to do it again? A presidential candidate has been eliminated from the race for her anti-NATO stance, among other reasons. Will they resist the temptation to do it again for other similar reasons?
Romania faces a crossroad. Probably not today, but in the next few years the choice will need to be made. There are three paths.
The first path is to succumb to an authoritarian far-right government, coming into power with the votes of the discontented.
The second path is to choose to prevent this by further militarising and tightening the screw on elections and freedom of speech, all in the name of national security and war mentality.
The third path would mean the status quo would choose compromise. That is to redistribute wealth in order to reduce inequality and general unrest. Sadly, this is the least probable of outcomes.
Romanian democracy, frail as it already is, will struggle to keep intact in the next years. While local factors are essential, one shouldn’t overlook the influence of regional geopolitics.
Cover photo: Romania’s Palace of Parliament.
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