Expats are cutting up their documents in protest after nationalist candidate George Simion lost to Nicusor Dan
Dozens of Romanians have posted videos of themselves cutting up their passports in protest against the outcome of the country’s latest presidential election.
The controversial vote, suspended last year by the country’s constitutional court, saw the pro-EU mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, defeat his Euroskeptic rival, George Simion, with 54% of second round votes.
On TikTok and other platforms, Romanians living abroad began sharing clips in which they can be seen destroying their passports.
“This is my vote for Romania. My vote is worth nothing. We will never return,” one woman said in a widely viewed video.
“Romania is dead,” proclaimed another netizen in a separate clip.
The passport-cutting campaign comes amid claims from Simion and his supporters that the election had been manipulated by Romanian authorities, who allegedly coordinated with foreign powers to sway the vote.
Simion claims that the electoral rolls contained some 1.7 million fictitious names and accused the government of busing in voters from neighboring Moldova.
Simion’s Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) has also claimed that Moldova’s pro-EU ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) had directed its million-strong diaspora in Romania to support Dan.
They point to an increase of over 70% in the Moldovan diaspora vote compared to the first round. Around 30% of Moldova’s population are dual Moldovan-Romanian citizens. Their votes constituted almost 25% of the total of Sunday’s turnout, according to the AUR.
Simion had been a supporter of the independent right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu, a NATO and EU critic, who won the first round of elections in November 2024, but which were later annulled by Romania’s Constitutional Court, which alleged foreign interference. Georgescu was later barred from running again in what Simion claimed was a “coup d’état.”
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has claimed that French intelligence attempted to pressure him into censoring conservative Romanian channels ahead of the vote. Paris has denied the claim while Romanian officials have in turn accused Russia of interference, but have not presented any evidence to support their claim.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed the allegations and has described the election as “strange,” arguing that the candidate with the strongest support had been “forcibly” removed without justification.
Peskov reacted with credulity to Durov’s claims of European interference, noting the EU’s long history of meddling in the internal affairs of other states.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also denied Bucharest’s accusations of election interference and dismissed Romania’s latest vote as illegitimate. Officials should clean up their own “electoral mess” instead of blaming others, she said.
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