Neo-liberal Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan is projected to have won a surprise victory over populist frontrunner George Simion in Sunday’s presidential elections in Romania. In contrast, the self-described “pro-Trump” candidate in the Polish elections held on the same day secured a slot in the second round of voting next month.

UPDATE 2335: Populist candidate George Simion has conceded defeat and acknowledged that the margin, by around a million votes, was too large to have been the result of any alleged voter fraud. Despite his loss, Simion vowed to continue the “fight together with all the sovereigntists, patriots and conservatives around the world for freedom, for God, for family, and for our common ideas”.

“We may have lost a battle, but we will certainly not lose the war,” he added.
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The deeply contentious Romanian presidential elections appear to have resulted in an upset victory for Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, with broadcaster Digi24 projecting a defeat for populist George Simion. With over 98 per cent of votes counted by the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP), globalist Nicușor Dan secured 54 per cent of the vote, compared to around 45 per cent for Simion.

While he only secured 20.99 per cent of the vote in the first round of the election earlier this month, compared to 40.96 for Simion, Dan benefitted from the nature of two-round European-style electoral systems, which typically favour the establishment over populist candidates as they allow centrists and the left to coalesce their vote in the second round around a single candidate, as, for example, has been deployed successfully to block anti-mass migration stalwart Marine Le Pen in France over the past decade.

The 55-year-old French-trained mathematician turned mayor of Bucharest has cast himself as the pro-EU and pro-NATO candidate, while describing his populist opponent George Simion as being “anti-Western”, an “isolationist”, and a “follower” of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I voted for a change that would bring prosperity and not bring adventure. I voted for a European direction and a good relationship with our partners and not an isolated one,” Dan said this month.

Dan has backed the continued support of the war in Ukraine and the expansion of the European Union into the Balkans, arguing that “Romania must be active enough both in the EU and in NATO to pursue its interests.”

The Bucharest mayor said the election was not merely “a clash between two people, but between a pro-Western Romanian orientation and a hostile and anti-Western one.”

The Romanian election has been fraught with controversy, with it being a re-run of November’s elections, which were cancelled over accusations that populist and anti-Ukraine war candidate Călin Georgescu was aided in his campaign by Russia.

Georgescu, who won the first round of voting in November, was barred from running in this month’s redo election and faces criminal charges of making “false statements” and the “initiation or establishment of an organisation with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character”.

Thus, Georgescu threw his support behind longtime ally and leader of the right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), George Simion, as his effective proxy. The move to block the popular candidate from the election sparked violent riots in the capital of Bucharest in March as supporters raged over the judiciary’s alleged interference in the political system.

Acknowledging the country’s fraught political climate, Dan said that a large section of the population is “rightly” outraged by the political system in Romania, to the extent that they think “the only solution is revolution.”

“It is our obligation to convince these people that the solution is the reform of justice and administration, so that Romania can move forward,” he said.

Despite declaring himself the winner before the votes were counted, Simion has alleged voter fraud and intimidation in Sunday’s elections. However, he has yet to provide such evidence.

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