EFFORTPOST COMMUNITY NOTED A literal political thriller movie plot is happening in Romania right now! The most deranged elections we ever had, Every day brough some new plot twist. Also we're getting couped but we're still not exactly sure who's doing it

This is like some overly complicated spy movie that developed over a month so it's pretty long, but literally nothing makes sense and things drastically changed from day to day so hopefully it's still an interesting read I'll use the same marseys to distinguish between the candidates and their respective parties to help everyone keep track

Quick background information that you should know

Romania was never a democracy and it will probably never be one either, it's a known 'secret' that the country is controlled by our secret services. After the revolution we never disbanded the secret service responsible for all the horrible shit happening during communism, we just asked them to stop killing people and left them to do whatever they were doing. So they just rebranded under a different name, retained all the control they had over the country and shaped the new 'democracy' and it's political landscape to fit their needs. Per capita, Romania has the most known secret service agents in EU, but the exact number of people employed is kept a secret, we just know that there are more than the official number. We don't even know how many glowie organizations we actually have since some of them are completely hidden, we just know that more organizations exist out there but nothing else. The secret services have no transparency and answer to no one, they have to give a briefing to the parliament about their activities every now and then, but beyond that no one can actually check on whatever they're doing. Obviously, there are a frick ton amount of conspiracy theories surrounding them and they are blamed for every unusual thing that happens in the country. And this is exactly what I'll be doing here

Second thing, we're an extremely docile nation who accepted pretty much everything those in power did over our history. Even during the revolution we calmed down immediately after killing Ceausescu and his wife, meaning that no one else was made to answer for the atrocities that happened during communism. Which is why the former generals and politicians still remain in politics today and why the secret services still control the country. So while reading this just remember that the population barely reacted to everything going on, aside from bitching on the internet a lot

On to the parties! We have three main political factions:

• the classic parties (PNL and PSD) They are the first parties established after the communism's fall and have people in all the state's institutions in order to control them. They are also known for closely working with the secret services and basically being owned by them. They make sure the glowie wishes are being fulfilled (for example it's accepted that the constant pro-EU and pro-NATO attitude Romania has has been enforced by the secret services) and in exchange they are allowed to steal as much tax money as they want. They have ruled for decades, each playing opposition to the other, while happily mooching money together. But they also neglected to do literally anything for the country so the population got increasingly fed up with them. While PNL started to fall to the side, PSD remains the biggest and strongest party in the country and is accused by every other party of manipulating the elections every single time. And yes, they actually do it every single time

• the woke parties (mainly USR) The party was created after people got fed up with the other parties for not doing anything to improve anyone's lives. They have modeled their program after the lib parties in Europe and America (mainly gay stuff but with some pro-Palestine messages too recently) but have libertarian tendencies. They infight a lot and split up in ever smaller parties all the time.

• the far right parties (AUR, SOS, POT) Newest and the most untested faction we have. Parties of all sorts of -ists, generally pro-Russia and anti-EU and NATO. Also lots of antisemitism, this will be important later. They argue a lot with each other but still try to form coalitions. All of them have been accused of being russian spies.

And lastly the candidates!

Lasconi

• Exceptionally stupid, has no idea on anything going on in the world despite wanting to become president

• Leader of the 'gay party' but tried to pretend to be trad and a christian. Nobody bought it.

• Believes that Israel should do a ceasefire because Hamas and Hezbollah are fighting each other in Gaza

Georgescu

• Massive schizo, internet conspiracy theorists could learn new conspiracies from him

• Independent, but part of the far right faction

• Believes romanian language was the one that created the latin language not vice versa

Ciolacu

• Average Eastern Europe politician - corrupt and with no actual principles, will change opinions to keep his power

• Leader of the biggest party in the country and the candidate with the most control over the institutions

• Doesn't know english despite wanting to be president and meet other world leader

Simion

• Closeted gay gypsy. Politely doesn't mention he's a gypsy so we mostly pretend we don't notice

• Leader of the AUR party

• Yes, aur as in gold. Gypsies will forever remain gypsies

Sosoaca

• Very fat and vey angry all the time. Will fight literally everyone at any moment, even her 'allies'

• Leader of SOS party, also yes named after her

• The last two aren't that important on their own, but since Georgescu basically didn't exist until voting started they were the most important representatives. Both fell to the side after Georgescu appeared

Before the elections

Quick note: we had two different elections recently, the presidential ones (in two parts) and the parliamentary ones. So, since we only vote on sundays, three weeks of voting in total.

• At this point in time Georgescu was completely unknow to anyone so the older parties were expecting to fight only two parties, both ruled by loud and stupid leaders. and parties have been mortal enemies for years while the are fighting both groups while also screaming at each other. Despite the rightoids slowly growing in power nobody thought they can do much in the elections.

• Sosoaca has been forbidden by the Constitutional Court to candidate for the president position because she made some 'unconstitutional' statements - anti EU/NATO and for some antisemitism. This is a huge breach of the Court's duties because they have nothing to do with how the elections are organized, other institutions are responsible for this. But the Constitutional Court answers to no one and their decisions are law (I'm sure you can see a pattern) so she got kicked out of the race despite all her angry screaming. The decision was later retracted but oops too late to rejoin the race

• The Constitutional Court is made from judges appointed by different parties, mostly the ones, so everyone was aware that are manipulating the elections again. But since Sosoaca is annoying and since she's suspected of working with Russia nobody really cared.

• In a rare public announcement SRI (main secret service organization for internal affairs) announced that the AUR party is suspected of having ties with Russia too. This wasn't news for anyone but it's nice to have an official confirmation I guess. But they also said the there is no proof of any external interference in any political candidate's campaign so they won't interfere with the elections in any way (it's still unclear if the last statement applied to Georgescu as well or not since he basically didn't exist at this point).

• Ciolacu who has been accused by everyone to work with Simion to win the elections reacted angrily to this. Basically, he'll support the party to reach the second voting session and there AUR will be this huge threat that will scare people into voting for Ciolacu in exchange of whatever political benefits he promised them after his win (like naming their leader prime minister). Anyway Ciolacu accused SRI of overstepping it's boundaries. They didn't react to this. Everyone else was angry that PSD is manipulating the elections again and even of risking Romania's security by working with a russian spy, while some even accepted that they'll manage to win. But beyond these points things moved on smoothly.

• This section is mostly important as a contrast to how the secret services and other political institutions reacted to potential russian spies (keep an eye out, open communications, quick decisions) and how they'll react from now on.

First presidential election!

• The battle was supposed to be between Ciolacu and Lasconi Ciolacu should win most votes inside Romania but Lasconi could beat him with the votes gathered from diaspora.

• A news article about a 'surprise' coffee house meeting between Ciolacu , Simion , the other party's leader and a secret service officer was written sometimes in the last weeks before the elections and someone rediscovered it. Lasconi's voters are annoyed. This is clear proof that PSD is once again manipulating elections.

• Voting happens and after that the counting starts. For awhile things were normal: Lasconi first, then Ciolacu, Simion and on the fourth place some independent candidate nobody heard about, Gergescu . Who is he and how the frick did he get so high?

• Then Georgescu climbed on the third place replacing Simion No seriously, who is this guy? Nobody heard of him.

• Then he dethroned Ciolacu from the second place. This was quite shocking because the idea of PSD not ending in the last presidential election tour was unthinkable. This were the last results most people witnessed before going to bed. The counting will go throughout the night and the official results would be announced in the morning. Lasconi's voters were naturally overjoyed.

• Morning came... and Georgescu was on the first place, way in front of the other candidates. just happened?

The week before the parliamentary elections

• The parliamentary elections happened a week after the first presidential elections. Obviously it was a very busy week after such a weird turn of events

• Everyone was confused as shit and started to search who the frick Georgescu even was. Turns out that he was a complete nutjob: he believes in all sort of new age shit (mystical energies, crystals, communicating with spirits, natural healing bullshit) every conspiracy theory out there (moon landing is false, covid is a hoax, aliens, jews control the word, satanic NWO, you name it), is very against NATO and EU to the point where he wants to pull Romania out of them, and praises Russia at any given opportunity while hating Ukraine and considering it a fake country. He also praised our version of Hitler and called him a hero

• So, where did this schizo came from? All of his campaign happened on TikTok. No media appearances, no poster, no fliers, nothing. He just gathered a following on TikTok through his insane ramblings and convinced these people to vote for him. Since he was deepthroating Russia's peepee left right and center, and since Russia is known for manipulating social media through an army of bots, everyone (aside from his voters) started to get worried that he's yet another russian spy trying to overthrow our democracy.

• Wtf are our secret services doing? What's the point of them eating so many of our taxes if they can't even defend the country from Russia? How could they miss this huge attack on our country? But every one of them remained silent and didn't react in any way to all this chaos.

• People started to get more confused and more videos of Georgescu saying insane shit were uncovered. More and more voices started to scream about russian interferences, but a few people pointed out an uncomfortable truth - PSD was always viewed as the party that supports the current political 'system' and USR as the anti-system candidates but that was when USR was founded. Now it's been years since then, USR won some important political positions and did nothing important with them or messed up... they've became part of the system just as much as PSD. The are voted mainly for being new faces against institutional corruption rather than because people agree with their insane positions. How do you earn these voters back now that they're about to throw Romania into Russia's arms out of spite?

• Vote observers from small villages came forth and said that PSD told them to count their votes to AUR's tally to propel them into the final round so he can have an easy win ("We fricking knew PSD is manipulating elections once again!" ). But it turns out that they were giving their votes to Georgescu as well. Wut? Did they know about him?

• Meanwhile Georgescu declared that he received zero money for his campaign and that he also spent no money during it (this is important for later). This lead to people saying that this is proof that Russia financed him in order to destabilized the country. Also multiple people were fined for still campaigning on the voting day with is illegal, and to everyone's annoyance Georgescu's supporters, who were doing it too, were completely unaffected

• Ciolacu and the leader of the other party stepped down from their leadership positions due to their embarrassing defeats (this will be important later on too).

• Now some weird accusations start to appear Sosoaca accused Georgescu of being a Mossad spy while an AUR member accused him of being a CIA asset instead. Both of these parties like to scream hysterically at everyone else so nobody really took them seriously. A former president known for his collaboration with the former communist secret services told everyone to calm down since there is no proof that Georgescu was financed by outside actors. He was actually financed by individual inside the country. Wtf does this means?

• Research into Georgescu's past revealed further oddities. Man was probably part of the old communist secret services (very few people were allowed to travel outside the country and despite being completely unremarkable he was allowed to go out multiple times), has been working with the KGB (to spy on them), has been a member of the Club of Rome (think tank for helping humanity develop sustainably or some shit, the important part that another romanian politician with ties to the secret services was there too), he was part of the UN and has been a freemason (for the last two he claimed that he left them because of all the evil shit happening inside the organisations). He also has been arrested in the past for his support of nazis but his cases were mysteriously closed with no explanation given

• A handful of r-slurs protested every day since Georgescu won the first tour but nobody cared

The recount and the slow death of Romania's democracy

• A few days after the official election results come in an independent candidate who only gained 1% of the votes decided to contest the elections despite having no chances to win. He wrote two different complaints, one against Lasconi and one against Georgescu The accusation against Georgescu was rejected because it was made after the three days limit expired, despite the complainer's insistance that he made the contestation in time. But the accusation against Lasconi was accepted. His declaration stated that in three different locations the votes that were supposed to go to Ciolacu were actually counted for Lasconi. The Constitutional Court once again overstepped it's boundaries and ordered for all the votes to be re-counted.

• At this point people were starting to get worried. Half of them were accusing PSD of preferring to burn down democracy rather than accept that they lost the elections for the first time (again, most of the judges appointed to the constitutional court came from the two main parties). Basically, since you didn't vote for our candidate we'll remake the elections until Ciolacu enters the final round. And since the difference between Ciolacu and Lasconi were really small while Georgescu was way ahead of both of them, it means that Lasconi will get kicked out of the race in favor of Ciolacu, which means a landslide victory for Georgescu due to the anti-system voters.

• The other half noticed that up til now everything happening favored Georgescu He avoided every possible consequence despite multiple irregularities in his campaign unlike other candidates (for example Sosoaca was pulled out of the race for saying milder shit than him) and all this scandal would further raise his popularity as the anti-system candidate. Is it possible that the secret services are actually protecting the nutjob? It would explain why they haven't done anything to stop him. They haven't even said anything to reassure the population that things are fine. Shit...

• Some politician made a petition for TikTok to be banned in Romania for the duration of the elections to prevent Georgescu from campaigning. People were torn between considering this yet another hit on democracy but enough of us were happy to do anything to stop Georgescu (same thing for the recount actually). The petition wasn't approved and later on he apologized for trying to shut down the funny videos app for everyone.

• Our secret services still said nothing at this point, and the EU decided to finally do something in their place. They called the owner of the application and demanded explanations for the bot filled campaign. Georgescu's voters got angry at this and said that this is proof that EU interferes in Romania's business and that we should distance ourselves form it. The investigation didn't reveal much, lots of bots, some russian but not all. No real proof of election interference

• Our current president finally decided to react to the panic and said that the secret services hadn't given him any warnings about Georgescu

• As a shock for everyone, Ciolacu came out and said that he disagrees with the Court's decision and that he'll pull out of the race if he's declared winner after the recount. B-but all this was supposed to be his plan to steal the election to enter the final round, wtf is going on? If he doesn't want this then who does? Predictably, most people realized that he's bullpooping and that he'll walk this back if he actually wins

• Now things get nasty. A weird facebook poster claimed that he was accidentally added to a mail list between multiple former secret service agents that were discussing using Georgescu to stage a coup. Basically the members of the former communist secret services were upset that the country distanced itself from Russia and wanted to forcefully bring us back into it's influence zone. One mail specifically said that we should become a satellite of China (?). Panic started to settle now, this was proof that at least some secret services wanted Georgescu to win and since they control the country then there's nothing we can do to stop them After this news people discovered that the parties (all of them) have the largest number of known former secret services officers as members, further cementing the conspiracy theories that our own secret services are dragging us all towards Russia

• Oddly enough Georgescu started to soften his positions. He declared that he doesn't actually wants to take us out of NATO and EU, he just wants us to stop agreeing unconditionally with everything they decide (like helping Ukraine), that America is Romania's most important partner, and despite being an actual nazi, he started sucking Israel's peepee hard. He said that on the first day after he's declared president he will move our embassy to Jerusalem, declare the arrest request for Bibi as unconstitutional and that he'll invite him to visit Romania, and that he'll not only make antisemitism a crime (it already is just not really enforced) but that he'll expand the definition of it as well You'd expect his nazi followers to be upset at that but they barely reacted at all. There were a few disappointed messages but they got over it in less than a day Leftists were more affected than them because muh war criminal muh genocide

• Anyway, moving on, we still have so much more to cover After the Israel stuff some guys noticed a few odd things about Georgescu's videos. He praised Orban and mentioned stuff about Romania tightening ties with Asia, which was also present in Orban's declarations. Since Orban, and a few other eastern european leaders, refused to arrest Bibi, since his speech mirrors Orban's, since he wants to remain an ally to Murica but wants to sever ties with Western Europe and since he has similar ideas of 'befriending' Russia as Trump, rumours started that Georgescu is an american and/or israeli spy. Basically, Trump wants to break ties with Western Europe but still wants to keep control of Eastern Europe and get it closer to Russia and China, who America will become friendlier towards, and Georgescu is meant to force Romania to play it's part in this plan. So, what where those accusations about him being a CIA/Mossad asset again?

• This didn't reassure anyone because Trump is already viewed as Putin's friend and OMG America is going to force us back under Russia, and how the frick is a shithole from Eastern Europe supposed to defend itself from the CIA and/or Mossad? Especially since our secret services, the ones supposed to protect us, seem to agree with all of this? At this point the general mood became depressed and fatalistic

• Rumours started that RFK jr and Tucker Carlson will come to Romania to show support for Georgescu Some journo even showed a letter from Murica's embassy in Romania with Trump's signature as proof. But nobody on murican side confirmed any of this. Later on, one of Trump's former campaign managers also hinted at coming to Romania for this but in a really vague way. Everyone was confused

• A new party appeared for the parliamentary race, POT, considered Georgescu's unofficial party. They had the exact same TikTok strategy as him, but if we can assume that Georgescu managed to hide long enough from the secret services through TikTok how did these guys slip through? Surely, at this point our secret services are aware of this electoral interference, right? Why aren't they stopping it?

• Leader of this new party visited Beijing at some point and promised that Romania will have closer ties with China if they win. Why is everyone trying to make us China's allies anyway, we didn't had much ties with them in the first place?

• Recounts start. Constitutional Court ordered all recounts to be done behind closed doors, with no camera or supervisors. Shit, it's happening, we're getting couped Ciolacu entering the final round won't help anyone since his party is completely controlled by the secret services and he won't do anything to fight their plans. Basically between him and Georgescu we're fricked no matter who wins

• Another handful of r-slurs gathered to protest but were quickly told to go home. Nothing else happened

• Oh, and that part about Gerogescu declaring zero donations and expenses? Turns out the institution responsible for checking up the candidates' campaign finances 'forgot' to publish the financial declarations for nearly a week, which is why his absurd declaration flied under the radar. Also, it's too late to do anything about it now, contestation time limit has long since passed

• But plot twists! Turn out RFK jr won't actually come to Romania, turn out Georgescu wasn't even a member of the Club of Rome, just part of some affiliated organization, and the same thing happened with his UN membership. Wtf, does this guy even exists at this point? But wait! He was actually part of the UN... but no one knows who appointed him there in the first place Clearly this is some glowie shit and we already know he was a glowie and that he's supported by glowies

The parliamentary elections

• These are actually the most important elections since the president barely has any power here. The parliament makes the laws. Candidate parties need to meet a certain voting threshold to win and the winners will make alliances with each other. While a dominant alliance that owns over 50% of the seats is preferred for a stable parliament we can have multiple smaller alliances negotiating each action, but that's a really unstable situation.

• The recounts are still going. Everyone is stressed and demoralized. Why do we even bother to vote if the Constitutional Court will just throw away the results again?

• Turns out the other party managed to get itself kicked out of the diaspora voting lists for not listing a woman candidate among their member lists. Funny lol r-slurs but once again, why is every happening favoring Georgescu ?

• Voting happens and the votes are counted. Because of PSD's bullshit not everybody can vote in these elections (you need to vote in the place you live in, so students or workers who travel for their jobs are eliminated) and diaspora's votes barely count. So the results now are different. All three factions failed to reach a majority. No matter what, the parliament is split in three and they need to negotiate with each other to make a majority

• Since diaspora's vote didn't count here PSD got most votes and become the most important player. No matter what, they will join the ruling alliance, and again the parliament actually controls the country not the president. This could be good or bad depending on whether they are actually trying to coup the country or if they just want to keep being able to steal tax money (later one means that they won't pull us out of EU) But if they ally with the parties and if Georgescu wins the presidency and if Georgescu appoints Ciolacu (or someone else from their party) as prime minister then together they will effectively control all parts of the country. And again, if the conspiracy theories with the secret services forcing us towards Russia is true then no one will be able oppose that plan

• Yet no one moved to make any alliance at this point since the recount haven't been finished and nobody even knows who can become president yet

Current situation!

• The recounts are finally finished! ...and nothing changed. All the panic and all the conspiracy theories were in vain. The second tour of the presidential elections will go without any changes - pro EU Lasconi vs pro-Russia Georgescu Last voting session will still happen this weekend But then what was the point of all this bullshit and chaos? Best anyone can come up with is that PSD tried to steal the first elections but either failed or waited to see how the parliamentary elections faired to settle on one strategy. And since they basically won the important election there's no point in remaking the first elections. Politicians

• Ciolacu revealed that he won't actually step down as PSD's leader. What a surprise Everyone is waiting to see who PSD will support both as president and as an ally for the parliament but they still haven't decided. Shit maybe they do actually want to ally with ?

• Until this point our secret services still said absolutely nothing about the situation, so Lasconi finally gathered the courage to do something that should have been done since the beginning: ask them directly what the frick is happening here She made a petition for them to make public the files they have on Georgescu Which they agreed (but only gave a rapport rather the actual files)

• It don't reveal much: some 'state actors' helped promote him on TikTok in a way that proved that they were very familiar with the algorithm and with how to keep themselves hidden from the state. The campaign had lots of similarities with the disinformation campaigns happening in Ukraine and the election interference happening in Moldova, both carried by Russia. But they don't name Russia as Georgescu's backers directly. Still, it's clear that Russia was behind this right? The secret services just can't reveal everything and endanger national security, yeah? The cops have decided to finally start investigating Georgescu and the media is calling him a traitor. Ciolacu came out and officially said that he supports Lasconi for president and that his party will join with her party and the other parties to form a pro- west parliamentary majority in order to block out the parties. It's finally over and Romania is saved

• Well, you see, it's too late to remove the russian asset from the presidential race since the contestation time window is over and we can't kick him out any longer Yes, he might be a literal traitor trying to sell the country to Russia, so what?

• Plus the files also revealed that the secret services were aware of Georgescu's campaign and his ties with Russia all this time. Good thing they aren't incompetent, right? I mean, they literally rule the country But then, why didn't they do anything until it was too late to kick him out of the race? Why the frick aren't them kicking him out now? He's a literal russian agent that betrayed his country to serve Russia and frick us all, surely there must be some exceptions to the 'too late' rule The president knew too, and Ciolacu (current prime minister) revealed that he was also aware of this but couldn't say anything since it was a state secret... but why didn't he at least throw his support for Lasconi earlier? He could have done this without revealing anything else... What is going on? Why isn't anyone doing anything?

• Besides, despite making an official alliance with the pro-EU parties, PSD can still either break the alliance at a later date and join the parties, vote alongside the pro-Russia parties despite their promise, and even if Lasconi wins the parliament can force her out of her position and call for new elections. Plus the parliament is more important than the president and they have the biggest share of it... maybe those conspiracy theories were right after all?

• The police and other authorities said that they received no warning for Georgescu no message or documents, nothing despite the secret services having files on him for who knows how long. They are just as shocked as anyone else. Even if they start investigating him now it might take awhile to arrest him. The elections might be done already. Sure, they could still cancel his mandate on treason charges, probably, but will they? And what does 'state actors' even means? It could just mean our secret services. And even if they specifically mean foreign state actors, we can go back to the CIA/Mossad conspiracy theory

• Are we still getting couped? Do they care so little about our opinions that they will tell us straight to our face that we'll join Russia and that there's nothing we can do about it?

Today

I wrote all this yesterday, so here are the latest developments

• Gergescu is still in the race. Yes, there are hints that some secret services support Georgescu , presumably the others are against him... hopefully

• We have notified NATO, EU and our neighbours that there were hostile foreign interferences into our elections

• A criminal investigation on him by multiple institutions has started, but it's unclear if it will help with anything. What will happen if he wins the election?

• EU demanded TikTok to not delete his campaign data

• The guy who demanded a recount came back and asked for both elections to be cancelled. Nobody knows what's his problem

• America asked us if we're ok. We still don't have an answer to this question.

• No seriously, why aren't they arresting him yet? Why didn't they actually do anything all this time?

So, this sunday I'll go vote in an election that might have it's winner already decided or might just get cancelled after the votes are counted An one of the candidates is an admittedly traitor to the country. And last week's elections might have been the last real elections I voted in, even if Georgescu loses this is the perfect opportunity for PSD to tighten it's control over the country even more But the whole shitshow is still going strong so I'll keep you up to date