Presidential Elections in Romania. Take 2

The article deals with the repeat elections of the head of state in Romania after the first round in 2024 had been annulled. The mass protest vote and visible escalation of the nationalist- «sovereigntist» sentiments promoted by the right-wing populist leader of the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians George Simion imparted special significance to the event and made his victory even more probable. However, blessed by Brussels, the long-ruling parties spared nothing to prevent him from taking power which facilitated the representative of the right-liberal pro-European opposition Nicușor Dan winning presidentship. An analysis of the twists and turns of the electoral campaign and its results brings us to diagnosing a deep crisis of the country’s political system increasingly struggling to imitate democracy. It is concluded that the new head of the state cannot be expected to cope with the crisis of such scale, since he will have to depend on the same establishment parties that caused it. In such a case the nationalist-«sovereigntist» populists, who have so far played the role of a safety valve for the controlled release of excessive internal pressure, will once again have a chance to break through to the feeding ground.