On December 6th, the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) annulled the Presidential Elections. The CCR’s decision followed the disclosure of intelligence documents on December 4th. These showed Russian interferences in the electoral process and campaign, via propaganda and disinformation. The gravity of the violations evidenced by the documents released, coupled with the many concerning declarations by Călin Georgescu, made the CCR’s intervention vital. However, the modalities of and belatedness of the CCR’s and the Romanian authorities’ response with respect to this unfolding mess do nothing but exacerbate the root causes of Georgescu’s win, bolstering his claim that democracy is being denied to the people of Romania.
  • Hamartia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    13 days ago

    Conclusion The CCR’s decision is a last resort attempt to prevent a further decline in the rule of law in Romania. Yet, its modalities, timing and face value are such as to shoot Romanian democracy in the foot. The gravity of the interference in Romania’s elections surely implied a need to intervene quickly, and to do something to protect democracy. The Court’s intervention however may more easily be seen as counter-productive in the long run. Once again, Romanian democracy stands on a shaky ground.

    Not sure I entirely agree with this conclusion.

    Their argument boils down to propriety. If the interference was spotted over both elections then both should be rerun not just the one in which the interference had material effect. This dissonance is amplified, they argue, when the election that is to be rerun is the one in which the incumbent (pro-EU) government was losing.

    If we look first at the decision to rerun just the election that was effected we can easily understand it in terms of efficiency and momentum.

    For an analogy let’s look at soccer: If a striker is bearing down on goal, in the penalty box, and he is cynically fouled the game is stopped, the offender sent off, a penalty awarded, then the game resumes.

    However, if in the same scenario, a midfielder is fouled off the ball the play continues to allow the striker the opportunity to score. Once the ball is out of play the ref can return to the foul and dispense justice.

    The penalty kick is a rerun of play, or the election in this analogy. It’s only necessary when the result of the game is heavily effected. If we stopped the game whilst a striker has a very good chance to score a goal when someone off the ball is fouled then it would incentivise bad faith teams fouling random players any time there was a clearcut chance.

    This decision making takes into account the difficulty of creating a clear cut chance on goal in a game of football and doesn’t allow play to be disrupted. Foreign interference in elections has a wide range of desired outcomes but generally throwing a spanner into the engine of healthy democracies is what they are about. So if possible allow the play to continue. If play has been materially compromised then rerun.

    The second aspect is the public perception. To which we can look to the US and see countless examples of the democrats hamstringing themselves by obsessing with playing by the rules and the republicans ignoring rules and precedent when it suits them. This happens because they don’t have a free press they have a bought press. I don’t know the makeup of media ownership in Romania but a democratic government has to be able to navigate a path to getting things done under the constant flack of belligerent entities. Sometimes it needs to have the metal to weather reputational trolling.