Europe, NATO Cancel Democracy

The populist-antipopulist controversy boils over in Romania, where frontrunner Calin Georgescu has been barred from running for a presidential election

Can an election be canceled for fear that the winner would cancel elections? This is the political paradox at the heart of the case involving Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, who was barred from a May rerun of last year’s presidential election. The Sunday decision by the country’s Central Electoral Bureau will go down as a crucial moment in the history of both the European Union and NATO, neither of which participated in the decision directly, though the influence of both was clearly felt (see accompanying Timeline: Romania Overturns Presidential Election Result).

It’s impossible to review what’s happened in Romania and not think of the last three years of legal battles over Donald Trump’s eligibility to run for President. Romania is our might-have-been, and Europe’s successful model for lawfare. Alternatively, it’s a new form of preemptive color revolution, in which the dictator is ousted before taking office: