Romania\u2019s constitutional court has annulled the first round of the country\u2019s 2024 presidential election process, which was narrowly won by far-right ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu amid allegations of Russian interference. <\/p>\n
The historic decision means a second-round runoff that was scheduled for Sunday, when Georgescu would have gone head to head with his centrist rival Elena Lasconi, will no longer take place. <\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s decision caps off a troubled election cycle in Romania, with the same court last week ordering a recount of the first-round votes. <\/p>\n
It also comes just days after the vote was hit with fears over foreign interference, after declassified documents from Romania\u2019s top security council found evidence of \u201caggressive hybrid Russian attacks.\u201d <\/p>\n
They also showed Georgescu was boosted on TikTok \u2013 the social media platform on which he largely ran his campaign \u2013 through algorithms, coordinated accounts and paid promotion, Reuters reported. <\/p>\n
In addition, the documents uncovered a series of cyber-attacks over the election period. <\/p>\n
Georgescu, 62, started out his campaign with single-digit support but enjoyed a shock rise to prominence, narrowly emerging as leader in the election\u2019s first round with 22.9% of the vote to Lasconi\u2019s 19.2%. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/i> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Romania\u2019s constitutional court has annulled the first round of the country\u2019s 2024 presidential election process, which was narrowly won by far-right ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu amid allegations of Russian interference. The historic decision means a second-round runoff that was scheduled for Sunday, when Georgescu would have gone head to head with his centrist rival Elena…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}