Calin Georgescu surprised the Romanian population by obtaining 22.9 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, after being ignored by the media during the campaign.
Elections in Romania, Calin Georgescu (pro-Russian TikToker and populist) surprisingly wins the first round of the presidential election
The candidate used social media as a tool to gain support, outperforming the competition after polls predicted he would win by just 5 percent.
Who is Calin Georgescu?
Calin Georgescu was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1962 and is 62 years old. During his life he was a member of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, from which he was expelled in 2022 for his overly radical, pro-Russian and anti-NATO positions, which were seen as an obstacle to the rise of extremist power. This year he ran for president for the first time.
His studies
An agricultural engineer with a doctorate in soil science, he held various positions in the Ministry of the Environment in the 1990s and was Romania’s representative in the United Nations Environment Program Committee between 1999 and 2012. After the vote, he published a post in which he claimed to have supported the “humbled, those who feel like they don’t count and who instead count more, with a voice that is a prayer for the nation.”
The strategy: support farmers
As an agricultural engineer, he used his expertise to reach out to farmers, supporting them with a proposal to reduce dependence on imports and increase production of energy and agricultural products. The same thing happened in Georgia, where the Georgian Dreams’ recent victory in the parliamentary elections was not predicted by either polls or exit polls. In this case, too, the decisive votes came from rural areas, as in Hungary, where Viktor Orban was able to consolidate his power by leveraging rural support.
Use of TikTok
Another advantage of his campaign was the use of social networks, especially TikTok: his profile there has almost 300,000 followers.
By posting clips of public appearances and videos addressing voters, he garnered far more support than expected. Shortly before the election, he also used this platform to promote a campaign to end aid to Ukraine. His posts were amplified on social media and in pro-Russia and Russian media.
But it’s not just political content: he posts photos of himself going to mass, doing judo, jogging and showing a human side that has probably made him even more popular.
Calin Georgescu’s positions
Calin Georgescu’s political positions are known to be pro-Russian and anti-NATO. For Vladimir Putin, “he is a person who loves his country.” Romania, Georgescu said, is not ready for an autonomous path in diplomacy and strategy, and the best thing is to entrust itself to “Russia’s vision.”
In a 2021 interview, he also spoke about the NATO missile defense shield stationed in Deveselu in the south of the country as a “disgrace to diplomacy” and claimed that NATO would not defend any of its member countries in the event of a Russian attack. He also praised Ion Antonescu, the country’s leader sentenced to death during World War II, and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the anti-Semitic fascist “Garda de Fier” (Iron Guard) movement, which was active in the 1930s.
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