Imagine, if you would, the following scenario.
In the next US presidential election, a left-wing populist steps forward to oppose the Republicans. Let’s call him Callan. Though formerly a senior public official and UN Special Rapporteur, Callan is not at first a household name. However, he quickly gathers a following among working class Americans whose believe their voices are not heard enough in public discourse. He advocates causes that, while popular among his base, would be a major disruption of the status quo, such as free universal health care, an end to unqualified support for Israel, and a normalising of America’s relations with North Korea and Iran.
Callan wins the election … but the election is then declared null by the Supreme Court. The reason is that he is suspected of benefiting from TikTok ads purchased by the left-wing philanthropist George Soros, and so of course the election wasn’t fair. Both Callan and Soros deny that any ads were purchased, but this is brushed aside. After all, they would say that, wouldn’t they? The Republicans stay in power.
Rumours circulate that the ‘Soros ads’ stuff is just a pretext to get rid of a troublesome threat to the establishment. These are dismissed as conspiracy theories. Then, a month later, a Republican grandee casually admits on television that actually, yes, Callan’s election was jettisoned because he was a threat to Our Democracy. He boasts that the same fate may befall other enemies of the establishment too.
It is then announced that the annulled election will be held again. Callan announces that he will run once more, but as he is on his way to officially register his candidacy, he is arrested and charged with various vague offences such as “incitement to actions against the constitutional order.” He is eventually able to put his name forward, but two days later he is legally barred from running in the election. At the time of his disqualification, he is leading in the polls.
Imagine that all this happens with minimal comment from other Western powers. Imagine, too, that the mainstream media, when they do deign to discuss the topic, are careful to label Callan ‘far-left’, ‘ultra-progressive’ and ‘pro-Hamas’, and always state that he ‘came out of nowhere to win the last presidential election’, just to reinforce the idea that there was definitely something dodgy about his victory. (They never say this about Emmanuel Macron, whom few had heard of before he became a contender for President of France.) When Callan’s supporters protest in the streets, the media dwell on acts of damage and vandalism they’ve allegedly carried out, and only ever print unflattering photos of them. When discussing Callan’s views, they give plenty of attention to eccentric ideas he supposedly holds to (such as his fondness for organic food), as if these were central to his political programme. The media’s relentless message is: “This guy is a dangerous crank. We’re well rid of him. Let’s all move on.”
Would you think, in the scenario I’ve outlined, that the United States was a functioning democracy? Would the whole affair not be a vindication of all those liberal warnings about ‘Trump the Fascist? Would you feel that the media were doing their job? Would you not feel angry that other Western leaders remained silent in the face of the regime’s bullying of an opponent?
My scenario is wildly improbable, of course; the idea of the international mainstream media faithfully parroting the Trump administration is laughable. Yet its mirror image is currently playing out in Romania. Călin Georgescu won the first round of the presidential election last November; the election result was then annulled, on the jaded grounds of supposed Russian interference; in January, former European Commissioner Thierry Breton boasted publicly of international influence in cancelling the election (‘On l’a fait en Roumanie’); on 26 February, Georgescu was arrested when he went to register his candidacy for the 2025 election. On 09 March, he was barred from contesting that election by Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau.
The difference from my scenario above is that Georgescu is a Romanian patriot who supports a peaceful end to the Russia-Ukraine war and does not want his country used as a battleground by NATO. That has made him enemies in NATO and the EU. That, and not the nonsense about Russian TikTok ads, is the reason why he is being prevented from becoming President of Romania. It is an outrageous assault on democracy that would immediately spark international uproar if it was perpetrated against a left-liberal politician by any western government.
Romania is a humble and uninfluential country on the other side of Europe, and its inner workings are a closed book to most Irish people. But we Irish should care about what happens there, and not just because we host a large Romanian community here. We are a supposedly neutral country whose neutrality, in the current climate, is increasingly under threat. The Euro-elites are determined, for whatever reason, that the war in Ukraine should go on, and they are not about to let some Eastern European election stand in the way. In arrogantly trampling on the democratic will of the Romanian people, they should be resisted to their face. And our rulers in Leinster House should be made to declare where they stand on the issue. If the will of the people is thwarted and Georgescu is driven from the stage without a fuss, we needn’t expect own wish for neutrality or self-determination to be respected in the future, either by our own government or the EU. Bullies become more confident when they’re not opposed.
Name of the author with the editor