So in Romania they cancelled and invalidated the elections. Note that the constitutional court there does not claim that there was electoral fraud, vote rigging, rule breaking, voter intimidation or anything else. There is no such suspicion. If we filter out the usual platitudes about Russian influence, the election was invalidated because a large proportion of Romanian voters decided that the videos on TikTok were more credible than the propaganda on state television. That is, according to the Constitutional Court and most members of the power elite. One might ask: In a democratic regime, don’t citizens have the right to decide for themselves who they will trust? But that would not be an appropriate question.
And note, too, how easily it passed. No revolution, no demonstrations, no riots by the security forces. A few ironically bitter posts on social media, and that was it.
I’m not saying it’s less democratic than elections in Russia or Venezuela. But it’s not more democratic either. In that respect, all regimes work the same way. Elections are organised solely to confirm the ruling power. And whoever really holds power is also free to rig or cancel them at will, and get away with it.
An election in which a real opposition asserts itself is a revolution. That rarely happens. In fact, it is an indicator marking whether there has been some fundamental shift in political and economic power in society.
The only interesting thing about the Romanian situation is that the ruling power did not see the elections through in time and had to intervene in such a clumsy manner.