Mihnea Teodor Popescu
The end of 2024 marks an intense electoral season for Romania, as parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for late November and early December. The period sees worrying trends of increasing far-right activities – not only electoral but also within informal and parasocial networks. In the context of the capitalist crises painfully handled by the political establishment and a constantly declining standard of living, bourgeois parties are strongly contested and detested by a large number of Romanians. Several issues related to freedom of elections and the activities of certain institutions raise serious questions about political and democratic rights in Romania.
A Far-Right Candidacy, the Bone of Contention
The main intrigue in the midst of the election campaign was the invalidation of the presidential candidacy of far-right Diana Șoșoacă, founder of the SOS Romania party (a split from AUR).
On October 3, 2024, the Central Electoral Bureau had initially validated her candidacy, but the Constitutional Court (the Romanian equivalent of the Supreme Court, in the sense of the highest judicial body) decided to admit two people’s appeals against her candidacy and invalidate it on October 5. The move prompted several presidential candidates to react strongly.
Nicolae Ciucă, a military man running for the National Liberal Party PNL (Romania’s traditional right-wing party), used the opportunity to attack social-democrat PSD candidate Marcel Ciolacu, the current Prime Minister of Romania. Ciucă said publicly that the invalidation of Șoșoacă’s candidacy was an abuse committed by PSD, which appointed the judges of the Constitutional Court. As the National Liberals have been governing for two years in a coalition with the Social Democrats, Ciucă announced the “end of the partnership” between the two parties, arguing that the National Liberals will remain in government only to prevent “possible abuses” by PSD, a party which, according to Ciucă, “has abuse of power in its DNA”.
Hypocrisy has not gone untaxed. Elena Lasconi, the candidate of the neoliberal party Save Romania Union (USR), the Romanian affiliate of Renew Europe, announced that morning that she would table a motion of no confidence against the Ciolacu government and said the PNL should vote for it if their position is genuine. Lasconi compared the national-liberals to “mistresses who stay in a relationship even if their man beats them”, a statement that has sparked strong criticism from the Romanian feminist movement, in a context where domestic violence is a widespread problem in the country.
As expected, the PNL did not vote in favor of the motion, showing that all this rhetoric is just power games to confuse voters. The only major parliamentary parties that supported the no-confidence motion were USR and the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR). AUR candidate George Simion reacted vehemently, accusing the “system” of blocking “alternative” candidates and hinting that he could be the next victim of similar abuses.
Now, as of October 20, Simion has co-opted the tactic and has accused in live broadcasts that the AUR party is being “sabotaged” by blocking its appearance on parliamentary electoral lists in certain districts. He called on his supporters to take to the streets. Currently, public spaces in several county seats have been besieged by AUR supporters who have come out to demonstrate. We don’t know if Simion’s allegations are true, but the events have demonstrated the party’s high capacity to mobilize supporters through parasocial channels.
Other candidates who had their candidacies invalidated by the Constitutional Court include Răzvan Constantinescu, candidate of the far-right PPR (Party of Romanian Patriots), a medical doctor who became famous during the COVID-19 pandemic for his opposition to vaccination and measures to mitigate infection.
NATO Membership, a Constitutional Value: The CCR’s Motivation
The CCR’s reasoning for invalidating the candidacies was sketchy and unusual. The CCR stated that Diana Șoșoacă’s “pro-Russian” and “anti-European” positions would not be compatible with the office of President, which “must respect and protect democracy and Romania’s international commitments”. The CCR ruled that the candidate’s actions and public statements, especially those on Romania’s exit from NATO and the EU, would endanger the constitutional order, compromising the country’s membership in these organizations.
It is worth mentioning that Dr. Răzvan Constantinescu also campaigned on the theme of stopping Romania’s involvement in the war in Ukraine and demanding an end to military support for Israel. The candidate recognized that a genocide was underway against the Palestinian population and accused AUR of complicity in it through its Likud connections.
Clearly, Diana Soșoacă has a history of nationalist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic statements. But in the CCR’s reasoning, these do not appear as grounds for invalidating her candidacy. This shows us that, at the moment, anti-Semitism is a much smaller problem for the Romanian bourgeois state than skepticism towards Western international structures. The ruling class in Romania is deeply subservient to Western imperialism, to which it is linked by organic ties, and perceives any questioning of it as an existential threat. It is no coincidence that other far-right candidates, such as George Simion, were allowed to run; sovereignism is allowed in Romania as long as it does not harm Western interests.
After all, the same establishment also bans ‘controversial’ left-wing demonstrations: for example, the PNL mayor of the city of Constanța claims responsibility for a recent ban on protests against the massacre of Palestinians, and the authorities’ response to those who made the request cites the ‘presence of NATO troops in the country’ as an argument against holding the protest. The same establishment has appointed its police forces to confiscate ”Stop NATO” banners straight from our hands during last year’s anti-war demonstrations in Bucharest.
Surge of Fascist Acts Following the Decision
Fascist and far-right manifestations have become much more visible in the Romanian space in the run-up to the elections. After her candidacy was invalidated, Diana Șoșoaca appeared in a live broadcast, where, hailing the interwar Iron Guard fascist terror organization, she insinuated that its leaders had been murdered by the same “Jewish power” responsible for blocking her candidacy. Her claims have sparked a wave of anti-Semitic behavior by SOS Romania party supporters, particularly visible on online platforms.
Anti-Semitism is also visible and normalized in the context of the presence of Orthodox Jews in Romania. A large number of Hasidic Jews are traveling each year to Romania on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Der Molech in Ștefănești. Jews from all over the world come to pray at the site. Also, as Israel’s Supreme Court in the summer of 2024 canceled the exemption from military service for Ultra-Orthodox seminarians, pious Jews have sought to avoid forced conscription that is incompatible with their faith. A number preferred to leave the country. Romania is considered a favorable destination for them because of historical links and the existence of several places considered holy. A few Orthodox Jews have moved into some neighborhoods in Bucharest.
Around October 1, several Jews transited through the airport in Bacău, Romania, to go to Ukraine for Rosh Hashanah after Moldova refused to allow them to transit. The right-wing extremists pictured litter and empty packaging at the airport, accusing the Jews of “devastating” Romania for allegedly “hating Christians”. Several Orthodox Jews have been non-consensually photographed and filmed in public spaces in Bucharest, with fascists accusing a “colonization” of Romania with Jewish immigrants. Conspiracy theories that 3 million Jews would settle in Romania were promoted in the absence of any evidence by the far right.
This development is a serious cause for concern. By banning Șoșoacă from running for president, the establishment has possibly made her extremist party more powerful and has given legitimacy to her hate speech by allowing her to appear as an “anti-system” voice. This is a particular risk in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, in which SOS Romania is running and is confirmed to appear on the lists. It should also be noted that AUR and SOS-Ro are parties with a broad base of supporters, which they have shown to be able to mobilize through parasocial means. These include military reservists. In the context of their exclusion from the bourgeois elections, we can fear more violent acts in the style of the 2021 Capitol Riot in the US.
The Need for a Workers’ Party and the Popular Forms of Revolt
But the most pressing problem of the Romanian elections remains the same as in the previous rounds: the total lack of any political force with a base in the working class and a program that represents its interests. Several small parties, such as REPER or SENS, have incorporated some minimal social-democratic demands (such as the construction of social housing or day-care centers, investments in health and education, LGBTQ civil partnership or the decriminalization of drugs), but their opportunistic character is clearly visible. These are projects of bourgeois politicians targeting the petty bourgeoisie and young workers in the upper strata, mainly in big cities. They will not reach a critical mass and they will not have the power to advance their programs, being merely electoral vehicles for various candidates on the back of progressive issues.
Worryingly, in the rest of the country, popular forms of revolt against the establishment were very quickly incorporated by the far right. The outbreak of small ruminant pest, which economically devastated the shepherds in the preceding months, is a case in point. The shepherds protested in the streets and accused the government of unjustifiably killing their animals; no one has come up with concrete proposals for adequate epidemiological measures as an alternative to the mass killing of sheep and goats. Instead, SOS-Ro and Diana Șoșoacă have been on the ground denying the existence of the virus. Similarly, peasants and small agricultural producers are aware of how big corporations and neoliberal measures are affecting their standard of living, but, as the small Romanian left does not provide answers to this, sovereignism is presented to them as an alternative by AUR and SOS-Ro.
Even the consciousness of workers in smaller towns is noticeably different from that of young workers in the metropolis, and often the only ones who respond to their immediate needs are right-wing extremists. Although obviously demagogic, George Simion’s promise to build houses for as little as 35,000 euros for Romanians if elected president was greeted with great enthusiasm by a critical mass. Surprisingly, he cited similar programs by Kamala Harris and Australian Labor Party to demonstrate the feasibility of his plan.
This demonstrates something essential: It is indispensable that the Romanian revolutionary left, in the flimsy forms in which it exists, should come out of its bubble in the big urban and strictly academic and theoretical debates, and become capable of articulating programmatic transitional proposals behind which it can rally as many people as possible from the working class and the rest of the popular classes. Anything else is doomed to remain an impotent reflexive exercise, against which history unfolds indifferently.
The working masses in Romania are profoundly dissatisfied with the instability and exploitation characteristic of the capitalist system; it is just that they have their own forms and language through which they articulate their revolt. The “Romanian left” should not be a sect in a garsonnière nor an echo chamber; it must put forward the aim to form a mass workers’ party. This is a difficult and long-term task, but it is the only way ahead. To this end, socialists must do grass-roots work, be able to listen to the people, articulate clear alternatives to the capitalist system and explain concretely and intelligibly the ways to get there.
