Shorouk Express
Scores of Georgescu supporters who had gathered in front of the bureau briefly tried to enter the building on learning of the decision, but were held back by riot police, Digi24 reported.
Protesters later broke off pieces of pavement and threw them at the officers, Bucharest police said.
Georgescu came out of nowhere to win the first round of the presidential vote last November, partly on the back of a wildly successfully TikTok campaign. But the Constitutional Court annulled his victory after an alleged Russian operation was seen as having influenced the result.
Elena Lasconi, president of the center-right Union Save Romania party who had been due to face Georgescu in the runoff last year before the election was cancelled, called on the bureau to explain its decision quickly: “Decisions must be explained, otherwise people will become furious, suspicious and prone to conspiracies,” she said in a statement.
‘This is crazy’
The Trump administration, itself aligning with the Kremlin on core foreign policy objectives, has supported the idea of allowing Georgescu to compete.
Trump’s senior adviser Elon Musk reacted immediately to Sunday’s news from Romania with a tweet saying: “This is crazy.”
Georgescu also tried to play up what he claimed were the international implications of the election bureau’s decision: “If democracy in Romania falls, the entire democratic world will fall!” he wrote on X. “This is just the beginning. It’s that simple! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!”
This article is being updated.
