How could a far-right candidate who emerged from nowhere, in a few weeks, become a TikTok star in Romania and then reach, to everyone’s surprise, come out on top in the first round of the presidential elections, organized on Sunday the 24th? November? Since Calin Georgescu, a discreet 62-year-old former senior official with pro-Russian convictions, obtained almost 23% of the votes after campaigning almost exclusively on the Chinese social network, the issue has been on everyone’s lips. It arises all the more since Romania, a member state of the European Union (EU) and bordering Ukraine, plays a key role in Western support for kyiv’s army.
On Wednesday, November 27, the Secretary of State and Vice President of Ancom – regulatory authority for the media and the digital sector, equivalent to Arcom in France – announced Pavel Popescu, elected from the National Liberal Party (PNL, centre-right). I wanted to start a procedure “suspension of the TikTok platform on the territory of Romania until the end of the investigation into the manipulation of the electoral process”, after the publication of disturbing elements about the role of the social network.
On Tuesday, the Romanian National Audiovisual Council had already asked the European Commission to open an investigation, accusing “TikTok’s algorithms have amplified content favorable to a certain candidate”. If the decision to suspend ultimately depends on the coalition government between the Social Democrats and the PNL, the current president, Klaus Iohannis, has urgently convened a national security council for Thursday in order to“analyze the possible risks to national security in certain computer and technological infrastructures used for the electoral process”.
Suspending a social network over accusations of electoral manipulation would be a first in the European Union. The context is particularly delicate since the current Romanian government provides essential support to Ukraine and voters are once again called to vote, for the legislative elections, on Sunday the 1st.Ahem December, then for the second round of the presidential elections, the following Sunday, in which Georgescu will face a pro-European candidate, Elena Lasconi.
A very discreet campaign in the real world.
TikTok, a network dedicated to video sharing, is almost as popular as Facebook in Romania, with almost 9 million users out of a population of 19 million, and its audience goes far beyond young people. “For about a year and a half now, TikTok has even become the platform where most debates take place in Romania”says Madalina Voinea, social media specialist at the NGO Expert Forum for electoral monitoring, who was one of the first to observe the disturbing growth of Georgescu’s audience on TikTok.
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