The AUR party should be in power because it ranks first in the polls, sovereignist propaganda writes.
NEWS: The AUR party is favorite in polls surveying the preferences of Romanian voters, according to a poll released by INSCOP. Thus, 38.1% of voters would vote for AUR, while only 17.4% and 16% would vote for PSD and PNL, respectively. USR has a rating of 12.2%, and UDMR 4.5%. The SENS party would grab 3.3% of votes, while POT has dropped to 3.2%. Diana Șoșoacă's party, SOS, has only 2.5%.
In this context, it is worth noting that, although it has a comfortable lead in the polls and was the only party to field an official candidate in the presidential final, AUR is in opposition. Conversely, the Prime Minister of Romania will be nominated from the ranks of PNL, which has an approval rating of 16%. Most likely, this party will give the next Prime Minister. The UDMR will also be part of the government, a party that does not even have 5% in the polls, the threshold required to enter Parliament.
NARRATIVE: Romanian democracy no longer exists, because the country does not have the leaders that the people want.
PURPOSE: To undermine trust in state authorities, to promote and amplify sovereignist rhetoric, to stir protests and anti-establishment movements.
The appointment of the Prime Minister is not based on opinion polls
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: According to Chapter III in the Romanian Constitution (art. 102 – 115) – which regulates the role, structure, investiture, functioning and termination of the mandate of the executive branch, the appointment of the Prime Minister of Romania is not based on opinion polls.
Article 103 clearly stipulates that “The President of Romania appoints a candidate for the position of Prime Minister, following consultations with the party that has the absolute majority in Parliament or, if there is no such majority, with the parties represented in Parliament”. Currently, no party holds the absolute majority in Romania, after the parliamentary election of December 1, 2024. According to the Central Electoral Bureau, only seven, out of the approximately 40 political formations and independent candidates met the electoral threshold required to secure representation in the Romanian Parliament: the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Save Romania Union (USR), the S.O.S. Romania Party, the Young People's Party (POT), and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), each party obtaining the following results: PSD ≈ 22%, AUR ≈ 18%, PNL ≈ 13.50%, USR ≈ 12.30%, S.O.S. România ≈ 7.50%, POT ≈ 6.40%, and UDMR ≈ 6.35%.
As a result, the former president, Klaus Iohannis, decided to appoint a Prime Minister from PSD, the party with the most seats in Parliament, which, even in the absence of an absolute majority, secured the necessary votes by forming a governing coalition with PNL, UDMR and the group of national minorities. The fact that, following the subsequent extremely turbulent developments on the political scene, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu resigned, does not mean that the president (interim Ilie Bolojan) should have automatically forced the creation of a new cabinet. According to Article 107 in the Constitution, in the event the Prime Minister resigns, “the President of Romania shall appoint another member of the Government as interim Prime Minister, to carry out the duties of the Prime Minister, until the creation of the new Government”. The fact that the current interim prime minister, Cătălin Predoiu, comes from a party that obtained even fewer votes than the poll invoked by the sovereignists credits him is irrelevant at this point, as long as the condition he was already a member of the government, a condition that is met. Prior to his appointment as interim prime minister, Predoiu was (and continues to serve as) Interior Minister.
Similarly, the positioning of AUR as an opposition party has nothing to do with opinion polls, but with the result of the election, as shown above. Moreover, after the presidential election in May, AUR deliberately refused to take part in negotiations for the creation of a new government, called by the president-elect, Nicușor Dan, invoking the latter’s alleged illegitimacy. In fact, the leadership of AUR, and especially the leader of the party, George Simion, now fashion themselves as the “main opposition party”, after in the electoral campaign for the 2024 parliamentary election, as well as in the campaign for the presidential ballot this year, AUR had obsessively repeated that the party would not form an alliance with any of the “corrupt parties that destroyed the country”, something which would have prevented AUR from forming a government at any rate.
Opinion polls show that even in the event of snap elections, AUR would not secure the absolute majority, so it would find itself in a situation identical to that of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the extremist party that won the legislative election in September 2024, with almost 29% of the vote. FPÖ was forced to remain in opposition after negotiations to co-opt other parties into a ruling coalition collapsed, and a coalition somewhat similar to the one in Romania (made up of Conservatives, Social-Democrats and Liberals) was designated by the president of the state to form a new cabinet.
Incidentally, a similar situation was reported in Romania in 2009, when the Democratic-Liberal Party managed to form a governing coalition with UDMR, the national minorities and the group of independent MPs, although in the 2008 parliamentary election it had obtained fewer votes than PSD (which, much like today, did not rest on a Parliament majority).
The arguments presented above thus show that Romanian democracy works, even with its unavoidable ups and downs, having the legislative levers to avoid major crises and power vacuums. And the fact that, at some point, during an electoral cycle, an opposition party becomes the opinion polls favorite, does not automatically mean that it will be brought to power, which is something that only an election can confer. A further note to be made concerns the fragile reliability of opinion poll operators, who for some time have not been able to truly reflect the Romanians’ actual preferences.
The sovereignists’ election campaign continues
BACKGROUND: Although the presidential election has ended, and the winner has already been sworn in office, Romanian sovereignists seem to continue the election campaign, forcing the organization of early elections, and manipulating public opinion by invoking the “five million votes” obtained by AUR leader George Simion in the second round of the presidential election. This score would propel the party to the top of any future electoral ranking, although, obviously, there is absolutely no guarantee that the electoral capital would be automatically transferred to the extremist party, in the event of a parliamentary election. In fact, in the first round of this year's presidential election, factoring in the (much more numerous) supported secured after the elimination of Călin Georgescu and Diana Șoșoacă from the presidential race, as well as the withdrawal of Anamaria Gavrilă, George Simion obtained only 3,862,761 votes.
However, these figures do not prevent the extremist leader Simion, who is doing a lot of traveling abroad these days, from reiterating the theses of the presidential election campaign, now in an even more aggressive tone, spiced up with false narratives regarding Romania's alleged entry into the war in Ukraine and the evil European Union driving the country to poverty.
In fact, right now, Romanian authorities are struggling to combat an intense disinformation campaign promoted by sovereignist media, aimed at influencing public opinion in Romania, which “presents all the characteristics of Russian disinformation”, the Romanian Foreign Ministry says. “In recent years, and even more intensely in recent months, there has been a sustained campaign of foreign informational manipulation and interference aimed at influencing public opinion in Romania and, most recently, the country's election. This campaign is still ongoing and presents all the characteristics of Russian disinformation and of the veiled anti-NATO and anti-EU propaganda campaigns”, a Ministry release reads.
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