Romania’s Constitutional Court May Have Poured Fuel on the Fire
This is a mess… Tomorrow we should have had the second round of the presidential election, but yesterday, after the voters living abroad had already started voting, our Constitutional Court decided to overturn its own earlier ruling, validating the results of the first round, and annul the election, turning the entire situation into a mess that’s likely to only make things worse. Not that things weren’t obviously very wrong when it came to Georgescu, and the fact that he was more dangerous than Sosoaca and actually had Russia’s solid backing should have been noticed much earlier and resulted in him being banned from running in the first place, but since that didn’t happen either before or at least immediately after the first round and those results were validated, they should have stuck to that decision for the time being and only pull the trigger on this “atomic option” if he’d have won the second round, despite all of the pro-European and pro-Western forces uniting behind Lasconi, even Ciolacu eventually releasing a statement expressing his and his party’s support. Admittedly, the fact that the Constitutional Court did this so late probably means that they had serious doubts about Lasconi winning, but I don’t think that doing this now is much better than doing it after the second round, in that scenario, and there was still the chance that it wouldn’t have had to come to it at all.
As it is, Georgescu’s supporters, and probably not only them, are now radicalized, or even more radicalized than they already were, and I for one am expecting actual riots, not just protests. Also, Russia and far right forces have reason to make harsh accusations, the political situation is up in the air, the major parties, and PSD in particular, will feel less pressured to form a national unity government against the far right, and the resulting bickering will only play into the hands of those hostile forces, both domestic and foreign. And whenever the new presidential elections will take place, we’re almost certain to end up with a second round between the two greatest evils, as in between the far right’s top candidate, whether Simion or someone else, and Ciolacu, or whoever PSD’s candidate will be. Of course, that was seen as the probable result this time as well, and yet Lasconi somehow squeezed past Ciolacu, but PSD made some mistakes that allowed for that to happen, and they won’t do that again. Not that Lasconi would in any way be suitable as president, mind you, and in fact I continue to be surprised by how woefully unprepared she is, and her stances on both economic and social matters are to be fought against, but all of that is a far lesser evil than PSD gaining the office of president as well. And, of course, this radicalization of the far right’s voters and the additional time that the hostile forces now gained makes the risk of the even greater danger, the victory of the far right’s candidate, remain very real even then, if not even increase.
