Romania is getting ready for elections
The electoral campaign for the May 4 presidential election in Romania begins on Friday.
Daniela Budu, 02.04.2025, 13:50
Romania had in 2024, like in no other year in three and a half decades since it transitioned to democracy, four rounds of elections – local, parliamentary, presidential and European Parliament elections. It also had a premiere in the country’s democratic history: the cancellation of the first round of the presidential election of November while the second round was taking place abroad, due to possible external interference in favor of one candidate. In that election, an almost unknown independent, Călin Georgescu, whose alleged sole vector of electoral promotion was the TikTok account, and the head of the Save Romania Union (USR), Elena Lasconi, were to face each other. Now, Romania is getting ready to elect its president again, on May 4. There are 11 registered candidates, seven supported by political parties and four independents.
The electoral campaign begins on Friday, and the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) has published, on its website, the revised edition for the presidential election of the Guide to Preventing and Combating Voter Disinformation Actions. According to a press release from the AEP, the Guide is not normative but sets out minimal recommendations for the correct identification of false news or information, in order to prevent and combat the effects that the spread of these phenomena could have on the electoral process. Headlines that promise sensationalism, alarmist news or with evasive wording are signs that the information published on social media networks could be false and it would be good to take a moment to analyze the content before distributing it further, is one of the recommendations of the Permanent Electoral Authority.
The document includes several recommendations, both for voters and candidates, because, AEP claims, disinformation phenomena can influence both participation in the voting and voter choices. And, most often, disinformation involves the use of automated accounts, networks of fake followers or videos that have false or manipulative content, as, for example, was the case in the electoral campaign for last year’s elections, annulled by the Constitutional Court.
Also in the context of the start of the electoral campaign, the president of the Senate Committee on Culture, Cristian Niculescu Ţâgârlaş, recommended the competitors to have a positive attitude, without personal attacks and to promote the candidates’ programs. He said that the institutions responsible for managing the electoral campaign will monitor their activities, especially in the online environment, and will remove misleading or false content, according to the legislation in force. The electoral campaign for the first round of the presidential election will end on May 3. In the country, voting will take place on Sunday, May 4, but the Romanian citizens abroad will be able to go to the polls for three days, on May 2, 3 and 4. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority of the total number of voters, a second round will take place on May 18. (LS)
