Reformist presidential hopeful Elena Lasconi told Romanians on Monday they faced an “existential fight” for their democracy and needed to rally to defeat a far-right candidate who would push the country back toward Russia and the dark days of dictatorship.
Romania’s election has turned into an unexpected nail-biter for the EU and NATO member country of 19 million people after Călin Georgescu, a virtually unknown hard-right nationalist with pro-Russian leanings, came from nowhere to win Sunday’s first round on the back of a TikTok campaign.
Lasconi, a former television news presenter, will face Georgescu in the run-off on Dec. 8 and is appealing to voters from other parties to try to preserve Romania’s place in the EU and keep it on a pro-Western trajectory. Georgescu won 23 percent of the vote in the first round, with Lasconi on 19 percent — meaning everything now hinges on where supporters of other parties will gravitate in the second round.
“Independence from Russia and a Euro-Atlantic path was our dream in December 1989 and is the dream that we must defend today,” the leader of the pro-EU Save Romania Union (USR) told hundreds of supporters in Bucharest, referring to the uprising that toppled Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu 35 years ago.
“In the next two weeks, we have an existential fight for Romania’s democracy,” she added.
She directly acknowledged peoples’ frustration with the current establishment but insisted that was no reason to allow the Kremlin to reassert its influence. “Governing in contempt of citizens must end, but our frustration and revolt must not become a vulnerability exploited by Russia,” she told the crowd.
Georgescu’s success has triggered alarm as Romania has in recent years been viewed as one of the EU’s more reliable members in Central and Eastern Europe when it comes to rule of law and security — with a major NATO base on the Black Sea.
By contrast, Georgescu has said he feels close to Russian culture and has hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a man who loves his country. He’s also been critical of the EU and NATO.
In his first remarks since his victory, he denied he was an extremist or pro-Russian, but still landed a nationalist catchphrase. “There’s no East or West, there’s only Romania,” he said in a live Facebook video Monday. “We remain committed to European values, but we need to be committed to us and to our families, to our children, to our ancestors.”
Lasconi said Georgescu, who has campaigned on reducing imports and increasing Romanian domestic food and energy production, wanted to unhitch Romania from the European and international financial mainstream and NATO, leaving the country at Russia’s mercy.
Accusing Georgescu of wanting Romania to be isolated like before the 1989 revolution, she summoned up images etched into the Romanian collective memory from the last years of Communism — poverty and cold apartments without heating — to sketch a dark picture of what a Georgescu presidency would bring.
Lasconi also referred to her own modest upbringing, talking about her mother’s hard work as a dishwasher at several restaurants in the small western town of Hațeg, where Lasconi grew up. “All of her life she washed glasses, with cold water, for 12 to 14 hours a day,” she said, adding that she and her family knew what it was like to work hard for a living without benefiting from political privileges.
Before her presidential run, most Romanians knew Lasconi as a news presenter on the television network PRO TV, where she worked for 25 years. Her time at the network included stints as a war correspondent in Kosovo and Afghanistan, as well as winning Romania’s version of Celebrity Masterchef in 2013.
Lasconi left journalism in 2020 to run for mayor of the small city of Câmpulung with the USR. She won a four-year term and was re-elected in June this year, boasting of bringing tens of millions of EU funds to the town. That same month, she was elected leader of USR and became the reformist party’s presidential candidate.
Her political career has not been without controversy. She opposed same-sex marriage and announced in 2023 that she voted in favor of a 2018 referendum to prohibit it. Her stance, which was at odds with her party’s, led to her removal from the USR’s list in the European Parliament elections this year and a public rebuke from her daughter, though she has since said she supports civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Lasconi also angered the diaspora in September when she said: “I’m not a traitor and I love this country because the easiest thing is to get a ticket and go somewhere else.” The comments were interpreted as critical of the many Romanians living abroad. She later said they were taken out of context and called the criticism “disinformation and manipulation.”
She was forced to clarify some of her comments again last month after she likened the alliance of the National Liberal Party (PNL) with the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) to “mistresses who know they are being cheated on, who also take a beating, but who remain in the relationship” in a statement perceived as trivializing domestic violence.
If Lasconi wins the presidency, she will be the first woman and first USR candidate to do so.
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