A top Romanian court upholds the ban on far-right Georgescu's presidential bid | Hacker News Reader

A top Romanian court upholds the ban on far-right Georgescu's presidential bid

apnews.com

12 pointstlogan10 comments

Politicians that don't have any constructive ideas and rely on hate to become popular should be banned from elections.

Seems way to arbitrary to not be abused?

I'm not sure how you are going to judge that one.

'Romania’s far-right — which holds about a third of seats in the country’s legislature — will likely seek to replace Georgescu’s candidacy, the deadline for which is March 15 at midnight. Many observers have speculated that his close political ally, George Simion, could take up the mantle.'

You can't exclude from an election a party that has 1/3 support of the electorate and expect the result to be respected.

Georgescu ran as independent, not as the candidate of any party. Simion ran against him. "Taking up the mantle" here means that he might be able to convince Georgescu's supporters to vote for him instead. (He got 13.86% vs 22.94% for Georgescu.)

The problem with Georgescu's candidacy is that he claimed 0 campaign spending, yet his campaign appeared to have quite significant amounts of funding. Excluding a candidate for campaign finance transparency violations seems acceptable to me, even if he had gotten 99% of the vote. It's the principle of the thing. But I do think the Romanian court system could've handled it better.

> Excluding a candidate for campaign finance transparency violations seems acceptable to me, even if he had gotten 99% of the vote.

I feel like this is a reason made up to justify preventing a result the EU did not like. Just like Germany was thinking about banning a party for the same reason.

People can think for themselves and vote in a democracy. Why not let the election play out freely? If the claim of a crime is proven, the candidate can face consequences after their term. Otherwise it looks like the EU and a few judges pressured by the EU are picking who wins.

Also aren’t we talking about very little unexplained spending? A million doesn’t really do much.

>Romania’s election commission has blocked pro-Russian candidate Calin Giorgescu from running in its rescheduled presidential elections, on the grounds that he has illegally benefited from Russian support. https://conservativehome.com/2025/03/13/from-garvanwalshe-ro...

People are touchy about Russia rigging things these days. They seem to be causing a fair bit of havoc quite likely flipping things in the Brexit vote and the 2016 US election, plus the invasion stuff.

Note that the election commission did not explicitly give this as the reason in their decision: https://prezidentiale2025.bec.ro/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/...

I mean, EU can barely agree on anything (less so of late, but that has been the pattern for the last decades) yet somehow they are pulling the strings of Romanian politics? Who is? Italy, Germany, Poland?…

EU is unable to prevent Orban from vetoing decisions left and right, yet somehow they can get Romania‘s top court to exclude a candidate?

It’s just not credible.

And democracy is also about following the law. Lying to everyone, breaking laws and then getting elected is maybe what some politicians do to a certain extend but that is certainly not what democracy stands for. One cannot say “people like him, that’s democracy”. <Insert nazi comparison here>

I’m not sure how the Romanian court and the EU leaders who pressured the country into this situation expect this to sit with everyday people. You can’t claim to be a democracy by cancelling elections and banning candidates or parties. Especially when that candidate is the leading candidate even for a repeat election in the polls.

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