(Adnkronos) – Romania’s electoral authority announced that the recount ordered last week by the Constitutional Court did not change the results of the first round, when the ultranationalist Calin Georgescu and the conservative Elena Lasconi triumphed, who will therefore face each other in the second round on 8 December. Last Thursday the Constitutional Court asked the Central Electoral Office to recount the votes of the presidential elections following complaints from candidate Cristian Terhes, who claimed that the votes assigned to Ludovic Orban, who withdrew from the race, were assigned to Lasconi.
The president of the Romanian Permanent Electoral Authority (Anp), Toni Grebla, reported that after counting the 9.4 million votes “there are no significant differences between the candidates”, although he asked to await confirmation from the Constitutional Court, which could arrive in the next few hours. “From what I’ve seen, there are no significant differences in terms of counting and recounting votes,” Grebla explained to the Romanian television channel Digi24.
On 24 November, Europe was shocked by the surprising victory of Georgescu, who obtained 23% of the votes, followed by Lasconi, who came second with a margin of just over 2,000 votes over the Social Democratic Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who resigned as president of the party after the electoral defeat. Concerns about the rise of the far right and Euroscepticism stemming from a victory for Georgescu, considered pro-Russian, were temporarily allayed by the Social Democrats’ victory in yesterday’s parliamentary elections.
