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Comment by AdrianB1 | Hacker News Reader

I see many comments signaling the facts are not known and the situation confusing. Here is a summary:

In the election, a previously unknown candidate had a massive TikTok campaign and got the first place, qualifying for a second round. The campaign funds were not declared, it looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite credible.

A recount was decided and performed, no change in results. So the Constitutional Court, highly politically biased (appointed by the parties that lost), decided to annul the result and do it again.

That guy was democratically elected. This is showing how fragile the entire idea of democracy is, people elected a really bad guy, but they voted for him by the millions. Practically democracy was trolled big time. The guy has no chance to win the finals, every other candidate's voters will vote against him, it's just trolling.

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There has to be more to it than that. I seriously doubt that the entire country of Romania is sitting on TikTok, and was so easily swayed.

Also, when I hear "looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite credible". Sure, anything is possible. But how can it be credible, if no proof so far, as you say.

I am no expert on anything Romanian, but my skeptical bells are going off when I hear this.

A lot of "influencers" did campaign for this guy, some of them not even knowing who are they doing it for. They signed contract with "talent company" to promote stuff without mentioning any name, but that stuff was his main point of the campaign, so they amplified the craziness. Not all of Romania is sitting on TikTok, but a large enough portion or around 2 million people voted him while most of the rest of the people never heard about him. The list of candidates was so long (>10) and some were not known, most people ignored them.

I personally don't know anyone that voted for him. It was a big surprise for most people. Now that videos of his speeches appeared in public space he has no chance to get any significant amount of votes as he sounds like a lunatic. This is why I said the entire thing is trolling.

> There has to be more to it than that. I seriously doubt that the entire country of Romania is sitting on TikTok, and was so easily swayed.

Romania isn't a de facto two party system like the US. There were 14 candidates on the ballot, 10 from various parties and 4 independents.

If nobody gets a majority the top 2 advance to a second round vote.

If I've matched up candidates and parties correctly, of the 10 party candidates at least 6 were from right wing parties, and collectively got 47% of the vote. But the way it was split among them the highest any one of them got was 19.18%. The second highest of them got 13.86% and the third 8.79%.

The highest non-right party or independent got 19.15% of the vote.

So no, Georgescu didn't need the entire country to be on TikTok. He only needed to get more than 19.15% to get to the second round. He got 22.94%.

If Romania had used a ranked choice or instant runoff type of voting system, which probably should be used when you have as many candidates they do from as many different parties as they have, Georgescu probably wouldn't have a chance.

For most of the 47% who voted right wing but not for him he probably would have been pretty far down in their ranking and been eliminated after a handful of rounds.

> The campaign funds were not declared, it looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite credible.

Because of what you wrote in this sentence, he was not democratically elected according to the laws of the country. He was elected through a tiktok campaign funded by foreign (dirty) undeclared money.

Democratically elected? Yes. Lawfully? No. There is a distinction.

Here's your funds, simple people https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html

He'd have had a chance if not for the "$0 campaign" publicity stunt, and the hidden trail of money coming from very suspicious places. Who is supposed to believe that he invested nothing, and got top position in the first round, while having absolutely nothing to do with the "benefactors". That and it seems tik tok favoured him, beyond the advantage of comment spam. And none of the content was labeled with the campaign id according to the law. If he spent at least a decent amount of money for the campaign, $100.000 or whatever, he'd have a better chance at plausibly denying the connection with the tik tok amplifier people, who in truth, could very well be just "fans", like Elon Musk was for Trump. And there's also the Iron Guard connections all over the place, that pretty much make you incompatible with the function, same reason the other candidate got removed from the list. So the decision isn't really undemocratic, although the moment it was given in was probably not quite legal/right, should have been done after the second round, but that would have caused more uproar and give him more legitimacy if he had won, and the odds are that he would have, so that's why they decided to cut it early, to minimise damage.

He had no chance in the second round. The moment he become a celebrity and his speeches were public, people figured out he is a lunatic. Therefore no chance.

What's suspicious about this trail of money? Check out the bank transfers https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html

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