Surprise Win by Far-Right Candidate Raises Vote Concerns

TikTok's Role in Election Under Scrutiny

Presidential election run-off set for Dec. 8

By Joanna Gill

BRUSSELS, Dec 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - From relative unknown three months ago to winning the first round of Romania's presidential elections, hard-right candidate Calin Georgescu's meteoric rise has stirred suspicions of interference and social media manipulation.

With the Constitutional Court ordering a recount of votes, TikTok faces a possible shutdown in Romania pending an investigation into its part in the first round of the presidential election on Nov. 24.

"There was a running joke in 2006 that our president was elected on Facebook. Now, there is a joke that he was almost elected on TikTok," popular Romanian YouTuber Silviu Istrate told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

TIKTOK BOUNCE

According to Georgescu, he is not affiliated to any party and his campaign had zero budget and was staffed by volunteers, but the outsider candidate was able to harness TikTok to build a considerable online presence, reaching almost 300,000 followers.

TikTok is among the most popular social media apps in Romania, with 9 million users out of 19 million citizens.

"The vote for him was an anti-system, revenge vote against our big political parties," said Istrate, adding that he does not contest the result but rather "the way Georgescu rose to this kind of popularity overnight".

UNDER THE RADAR

Georgescu's shock win relative to his pre-election polling data indicated "inauthentic behaviour" or fake bot accounts, according to Berlin-based NGO Democracy Reporting International.

"They claim to be entertainment but are doing political propaganda in plain sight," said researchers at Bucharest-based Expert Forum in a policy brief.

FUTURE-PROOFING

The European Commission has been asked to investigate TikTok's compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into effect in February. If found in breach, TikTok faces fines of up to 6% of its global turnover and could be banned from Europe altogether if there is a repeat offence.

"It is a problem which could extend to the entire EU," said Vanberghen. She recommended educating voters about algorithms' impact on their exposure and called for additional regulations safeguarding democratic processes from potential interference from foreign-owned platforms.

"As AI (artificial intelligence) technology evolves, EU member states will need to implement guardrails to address unique challenges posed by these new tools," she concluded.

(Reporting by Joanna Gill; Editing by Jon Hemming.)