May 5 (UPI) -- Far-right candidate George Simion was declared the winner Monday in the first round of Romania's presidential election, which is being rerun after the result from a race in November was annulled amid allegations of fraud and Russian interference.
A run-off election will be held May 18 because Simion only polled 40.96% of the vote -- short of the 50% needed for an outright win. He is expected to prevail as his liberal rival, Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan and runner-up in Sunday's ballot, received half as many votes.
"With yesterday's historic vote, the Romanian people have spoken. It's time to be heard! It was more than a choice -- it was an act of courage, trust, and unity. It is the victory of those who truly believe in Romania -- a free, respected, sovereign country!" Simion, leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, wrote in a post on X.
"This is the dawn of a great era. Sovereign nations, freedom and common sense, not tyranny, sick ideology and endless abuses," he added in a reference to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's accusing Germany's government of "tyranny in disguise" after it designated the far-right Alternative for Germany party a far-right extremist organization.
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Dan beat the candidate of the Social Democratic Party-led coalition government, Crin Antonescu, into third place with the Adevarul newspaper reporting that Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu had told close party colleagues that he is willing to resign from both the leadership of the Government and the PSD in a move that is seen as a boost for Dan's chances as the candidate of the center.
Alexandru Muraru, leader of the National Liberal Party, Romania's third-largest party, also threw his support behind Dan on Monday.
A run-off election between the pro-Russian nationalist Calin Georgescu and centrist Elena Lasconi was canceled days before it was due to take place Dec. 8. The Constitutional Court in Bucharest ruled the annulment of "the entire electoral process regarding the election of the president of Romania," citing a Russian propaganda campaign to influence the outcome in Georgescu's favor as the reason.
Declassified Romanian intelligence documents detailed a security services warning that the electoral system had been targeted by Russia in an "aggressive hybrid action" to boost the fortunes of Georgescu, a previously unknown candidate.
The intelligence concluded that Georgescu's first round victory in the ninth presidential election since the 1989 Romanian revolution, with just under 23% of the vote, was "not a natural outcome" and that a "state actor" catapulted him over Lasconi and Ciolacu with an artificially coordinated social media campaign.
That led to him being dubbed the TikTok candidate due to the blanket promotion he received on the platform from 25,000 TikTok accounts activated two weeks before the election.
The then-U.S. administration of President Joe Biden condemned the alleged Russian interference, saying Romanians must have confidence that their elections reflect the democratic will of the Romanian people "free of foreign malign influence aimed at undermining the fairness of their elections."
Simion and Georgescu were seen voting together on Sunday, with many of the latter's supporters believed to have transferred their vote to Simion.
As in November's poll, hundreds of thousands of people in Romania's global diaspora cast their votes from overseas at almost 1,000 polling stations set up in Italy, Malta, Spain, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium the Netherlands and the United States.
The BBC said Simion won the votes of more than 70% of Romanians voting in Italy, Spain and Germany.
