The Constitutional Court received four referrals regarding the cancellation of the first round of elections

  The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) should have postponed Monday’s decision and insisted on a thorough verification of the legality of Calin Georgescu’s campaign, Remus Pricopie, the rector of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA), said in a press release asking the CCR to meet to reanalyze the situation following the declassification of the CSAT documents.   Cristian Terhes, whose appeal against the first round was rejected by the Constitutional Court on Monday, said that he had filed a new request, also based on the declassified documents. Also on Thursday, Florin-Leontin Abraham, director of the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism under the Romanian Academy, asked the CCR to “urgently analyze the content of the previously mentioned information (CSAT documents – ed.), in order to verify the integrity of the electoral process in Romania and, if necessary, resume the first round of the presidential election.” Cristian Terhes, a candidate who obtained 1% in the first round of the presidential election, also told G4Media on Thursday that he has filed a new request asking the Constitutional Court to annul the first round of the presidential election. He said the new request is based on documents declassified by the CSAT, which showed that there was a “state actor” behind Calin Georgescu’s campaign. The Calea Europeana publication also announced on Thursday that it had notified the CCR for the resumption of the first round of the presidential elections. “Calea Europeana, as a media publication that has undertaken to promote European and Euro-Atlantic democratic values in Romania, notified the Constitutional Court of Romania on Thursday regarding the illegalities identified and communicated by the CSAT in connection with the conduct of the electoral process in Romania for the first round of the presidential elections,” the journalists reported.   The judges of the CCR are to meet on Thursday, at 5:00 PM, most likely to discuss the admissibility or inadmissibility of the requests to annul the first round of the presidential elections, which was validated on Monday by the same Court, sources close to the discussions told G4Media. SNSPA Rector, Remus Pricopie, said: “The CCR must remove from the ballots the one who should have been the beneficiary of this plot”.   “The Russian Federation staged a coup d’état, disguised through apparently democratic mechanisms, but perfidiously manipulating the electoral process. Fortunately, it failed. Now, under these conditions, the CCR’s responsibility is immense: it must remove from the ballots the one who should have been the beneficiary of this plot, and the prosecutor’s office must expand the investigations, identifying and holding accountable all those who contributed to these illegal, treasonous actions, either through complicity or through direct actions”, specifies Remus Pricopie.   The professor emphasizes that “Georgescu is a traitor to the country, trained, launched and supported in the fight by the Russians”, and a lack of action on the part of the Romanian authorities will be “an unprecedented surrender to a strategic adversary, endangering not only the integrity of the electoral process, but also our democracy itself”. “The first round of the elections must be resumed in conditions of full legality, under the strict supervision of state institutions, in order to guarantee the fairness and legitimacy of the electoral process. It is a fundamental duty, towards the citizens and towards the future of Romania”, demands the SNSPA rector.   Toni Grebla, the president of the Permanent Electoral Authority, said though on Thursday that after the CCR validated the results of the first round of voting, there is no way to appeal against the decision pronounced by the Court.   “After the CCR validated the results of the first round of voting, there is no appeal against that decision pronounced by the Court, and there is no longer, because the deadlines have been exceeded, any possibility of contesting the results of the first round of voting,” AEP President Toni Grebla declared on Antena3, quoted by News.ro. That is what the law says, Toni Grebla specified. The AEP President explained that, after the second round of voting is held, “there are certain persons, subjects, who can notify the CCR, possibly requesting the invalidation of the vote or the candidate.” The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) reports, discussed in the CSAT meeting last week and declassified on Wednesday by President Iohannis, speak of an operation prepared in advance, in favor of Calin Georgescu and which has the “mode of operation of a state actor”. For example, the TikTok accounts were created in 2016, and the Telegram ones in 2022, and all of them were mobilized in the current campaign.   The SRI twice asserts the idea that a state actor was involved in the Romanian elections. First, through certain attacks on AEP systems. Second, in the way in which Calin Georgescu’s notoriety was inflated and the promotion, messages and volume of TikTok accounts used were correlated. When the CSAT documents were declassified, it was seen that the SRI claimed that 797 accounts had been created on TikTok, for Calin Georgescu, since 2016.   Public opinion wondered if there was an error in the SRI’s information to the CSAT, because TikTok only became available in 2017 outside China. The SRI claims that it is not an error and explains.   The TikTok network only became available outside China in 2017, and in Europe in 2018. However, accounts could have been created and used on the platform since 2016 by people outside China with the help of “Virtual Private Network anonymization services,” the SRI claims, in a statement.