Last Sunday, my country was jolted awake by a collective shock. For days, we’ve been consumed by one name: Călin Georgescu. His unexpected rise to the top in the first round of Romania’s presidential elections has polarised the country to an extent unseen since we became a democracy 35 years ago.
Romania’s streets, screens and dining tables are abuzz with debates about how a fringe far-right and ultra-nationalist candidate managed to capture the nation’s attention – and votes. Protesters, many of them young, have already taken to the streets.
But more than 2 million Romanians voted for Georgescu. My father, a retired police officer, was one of them. He spends much of his free time on TikTok, and was swept up in Georgescu’s rhetoric. TikTok’s algorithm fed him a steady stream of short, stirring videos of Georgescu invoking patriotism and promising to “put Romania first” weeks before the election. My father explained to me that his vote wasn’t necessarily an endorsement of Georgescu’s nationalist beliefs – even though they did resonate in part with him – but more of a protest against the political establishment. “I wanted to sanction the mainstream political class,” he told me.
His sentiment is not uncommon. For the past 35 years, Romania’s two dominant parties – centre-left social democrats and centre-right liberals – have presided over corruption scandals, nepotism, politically connected fraud and opaque use........