Romania’s narrow political escape

Inside, I was greeted by a stern man with a moustache who checked my ID and gestured silently to a door. I walked in and froze. I was alone in a cavernous room, facing 12 election officials behind separate desks. No smiles – just weary, mildly annoyed looks. One of them took my ID and scanned it. Nothing. He scanned it again. Still nothing. A younger official came over, took the piece of plastic and tried again. “It’s the lighting,” he said, handing me the ballot and the voting stamp.

There were two names on the ballot paper: George Simion and Nicușor Dan.

This time, for many of us, the choice was easy. It wasn’t the usual dilemma of picking the lesser of two evils. This time, the contrast couldn’t have been clearer.

Simion is a former football hooligan turned populist firebrand, who wanted to derail Romania’s path to closer European integration and bulldoze our democratic institutions. Dan is a soft-spoken mathematician, a democrat who became mayor of Bucharest after he repeatedly and successfully sued city hall over illegal real estate deals. 

Simion made blunder after blunder in the final stretch. He announced that he wanted to sack half a million state employees, and called them parasites. He dodged debates. He nonchalantly explained that his promise to build and sell cheap apartments had been a publicity stunt, rambled on about assassination plots and electoral fraud, and even managed to alienate the French far right by comparing France to Iran. 

Dan, by contrast, kept his cool. He campaigned relentlessly, closing what had seemed an impossible 20-point gap after Simion’s 41% result in the first round. Few people thought he could win. But he did, just like when he first ran for mayor of Bucharest, when he took almost 54% of the votes, though no one thought he could do it. 

This presidential election has been the most emotional and consequential in Romania’s post-communist history. Romania has a budget deficit of more than 9% of GDP, and it depends heavily on EU funds. Lose that lifeline, and the economy tanks. We got a taste of that chaos two weeks ago, when Simion won the first round. Investors panicked and started selling the Romanian currency. The central bank had to pump €6bn into the market to calm things down, but even so, the Leu lost around 3% of its value before bouncing back.

Simion, broadcasting his bile from the presidential pulpit, would have poisoned the social fabric of the country. A Simion presidency would also have knocked out a critical pillar on Nato’s south-eastern flank. Intelligence sharing? Military coordination? All at risk. With Hungary and Slovakia already drifting from the western consensus and Bulgaria on the fence, Romania and Poland have vital roles in the support chain to Ukraine. 

With Dan at the helm, things remain complicated, but at least Romania remains democratic, pro-European and anchored in Nato. But he inherits a fractured nation. Trust in political leadership is at an all-time low after the chaotic failed elections last November, in which so many people fell for the fantastical promises of Călin Georgescu, a mystic extremist who inspired Simion. The constitutional court annulled Georgescu’s victory because of foreign interference, hence the re-run. But many people were left wondering why our intelligence services didn’t see that coming.

And once again, we watched helplessly as half the country spiralled into self-destructive hysteria. Rage against a corrupt political elite, believed to have rigged previous elections, nearly pushed voters into the arms of Simion, a man who would have torn down the whole system for his own ends. That’s how close we came to collective suicide, to burning down the house with everybody in it. 

Alex Gröblacher is a freelance journalist living in Bucharest