Romanian Nationalist Wins First Round of Presidential Voting

George Simion, a right -wing nationalist who has promised to “make Romania great,” won the first round of his country’s presidential elections on Sunday, turning the recent trend of voters who punish candidates seen as TRUPP friendly.

With more than 98 percent of the votes cast within Romania counted, Mr. Simion was far ahead of 10 rival candidates, adorn more than 40 percent. A partial count of the votes of the Romanians living abroad, who generally lean correctly, also gave Mr. Simion a great advantage.

The results, thought incomplete, assured Mr. Simion a slot in a second round on May 18 against the probable ending of the second place, Nicusor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, the capital of Romania.

Unlike voters in Canada and Australia, who in recent elections favored the parties openly opposed to Mr. Trump, the Romanians, supporting Mr. Simion, rewarded one of the most vowel fans of the Maga Movement in Europe.

Romanian voters also gave a strong rebuke to a decision in December by the Constitutional Court of the country to cancel a first previous round of the presidential ballot and cancel the victory of Calin Georgescu, an ultranationalist. He was accused in February of several crimes, including the illegal campaign and the participation in the establishment of an organization “with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character.”

Mr. Georgescu, who was forbidden to compete in the reprogrammed vote, voted on Sunday next to Simion. Both men have presented themselves as common Romanian champions against a corrupt establishment.

Celebrating the results on Sunday night, Mr. Simion declared that elections are a “victory for Romanian dignity.”

“Despite the obstacles,” he said, “despite the manipulation, despite a press paid to degrade day after day, the Romanians have risen.”

Mr. Simion shares many of Mr. Georgescu’s opinions, including hostility to the European Union and the opposition to military aid for Ukraine. However, a fixed element of Romanian policy for years, is much better known, and is seen as something more predictable, than Mr. Georgescu, an erratic figure prone to mystical reflections and admiring comments on the fascists tight Romanians.

Few Romanians had heard of Mr. Georgescu until he won the initial round of the vote after an increase in support driven by a mysterious flooding of videos about Tiktok in the last days of the campaign.

The Constitutional Court canceled its victory only two days before a December runoff vote that Mr. Georgescu had a well -positioned leg to win. The court said he had wanted to “guarantee the correction and legality of the electoral process.”

The intervention of the court caused protests and street complaints of the vice president JD Vance that Europe was in “withdrawal” of democracy and freedom of expression. The ruling occurred after the Romanian security service published declassified intelligence reports that pointed to the possible Russian interference in the electoral campaign, but did not provide solid evidence of that.

The president of Romania has limited powers, but include the general command of the Armed Forces, a great said in military spending and the supervision of foreign policy. The control of economic and other policies is based on Parliament, in which centrist forces have a narrow majority.

Andrada Lautaru Bucharest contributed reports.