Romania's top court annuls presidential election citing Russian meddling, prompting a re-run amid institutional chaos, cyberattack probes, and protests fears.
BUCHAREST (Reuters) -Romania's top court annulled an ongoing presidential election after accusations of Russian meddling and said on Friday the entire process, which had been due to conclude this weekend, would have to be re-run.
The second round had been scheduled for Sunday and voting has already begun in polling stations abroad. It would have pitted Calin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian candidate, against pro-European Union centrist leader Elena Lasconi.
"The electoral process to elect Romania's president will be fully re-run, and the government will set a new date and ... calendar for the necessary steps," the court said in a statement.
Georgescu scored single digit numbers in opinion polls before the first round vote on Nov. 24 but then surged to a first-place finish that raised questions over the result.
Georgescu wants to end Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion. If he won the presidency it would upend the pro-Western politics of the EU and NATO member, pushing Romania closer to a belt of states in central and eastern Europe that have powerful populist, Russia-friendly politicians, including Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.
Friday's court ruling plunged the country into institutional chaos. Current President Klaus Iohannis's term ends on Dec. 21 and it was unclear who would be head of state after this date.
Analysts said the ruling may erode institutions, trigger street protests and ultimately still endanger the nation's pro-Western course. It was not yet clear if Georgescu would be allowed to take part in the re-run election.
Romania's top security council declassified documents on Wednesday that said the country was a target of "aggressive hybrid Russian attacks" during the election period.
Russia has denied any interference in Romania's election campaigns.
The top court, which had validated the first presidential round on Monday, said in its Friday reversal that it was "seeking to ensure the fairness and legality of the electoral process", adding that a detailed explanation of its ruling would be released at a later date.
There was no immediate comment from Georgescu, but he was due to make a statement at 1900 GMT on Friday.
George Simion, the leader of the opposition hard-right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR) called the court ruling a "coup d'etat", adding "nine politically appointed judges, scared that a candidate outside the system had all chances to become Romania's president, decided to annul Romanians' will".
Simion came fourth in the first round. He and AUR then endorsed Georgescu.
Lasconi condemned the court's ruling. "The constitutional court's decision is illegal, amoral and crushes the very essence of democracy, voting," she said.
However, Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu supported the move, calling it "the only correct solution".
INVESTIGATING CAMPAIGN
Romania's anti-organised crime prosecuting unit DIICOT said it was launching an investigation into Georgescu's campaign after analysing the declassified documents.
"Prosecutors are looking at the commission of the crimes of illegal operations with computer devices or programmes, the attempted crime of disrupting the functioning of computer systems and the attempted crime of illegal access to a computer system," it said in a statement.
Sunday's run-off vote would have been the third consecutive ballot after the first presidential round and a Dec. 1 parliamentary election in which far-right parties gained a third of seats, though the ruling Social Democrats emerged as the largest grouping and hope to cobble together a pro-EU coalition government.
The parliamentary vote was unaffected by Friday's court ruling.
In one of the declassified documents, Romania's intelligence agency said Georgescu was massively promoted on social media platform TikTok through coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid promotion. Georgescu has declared zero funds spent in the campaign.
TikTok denies giving Georgescu special treatment, saying his account was labelled as a political account and treated like any other.
The intelligence service also said access data for official Romanian election websites was published on Russian cybercrime platforms. The access data was probably procured by targeting legitimate users or by exploiting the legitimate training server, the agency said.
It added that it had identified more than 85,000 cyberattacks that aimed to exploit system vulnerabilities.
Some experts predicted Georgescu would be barred from running again.
"It is extremely likely that the court will not allow Calin Georgescu to run again," said Sergiu Miscoiu, a political science professor at Babes-Bolyai University.
Earlier this year, the court banned ultra-nationalist party leader and European Parliament member Diana Sosoaca from running for president in a move that analysts said overstepped court powers.
"There will be street protests, people will become radicalised and depending on which candidate from the radical right remains in the race, people will rally around him," said Miscoiu.
Romania's hard-currency bonds rose following the ruling. Dollar-denominated issued enjoyed the biggest gains, with the 2048 bond rising 0.7 cents to be bid at 81.15 cents in the dollar, its strongest level since mid-November, Tradeweb data showed.
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