MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS/. The Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) has exposed the methods the West used to ensure its preferred candidate won Romania’s recent presidential election.
Before the vote, there was a visible increase in the number of alarming reports by the Romanian media, with journalists and experts trying to convince the audience that the economic situation in the country would worsen and foreign investors would leave if George Simion, leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), won the election, GFCN points out. Some reports even mentioned the risk of Romania’s withdrawal from the European Union and NATO, although Simion had never proposed it.
Online resources were also widely used in the information campaign. "For example, Declic. ro, one of the largest online activism communities in Romania, created an entire election guide about how to urge acquaintances to vote for 'the pro-European' candidate," GFCN notes. An online dictionary greeted its users with a message asking if they would vote for Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan.
"We can easily see how democracy is working in Romania," GFCN observes. When an inconvenient candidate managed to get into the presidential race and, more importantly, win the first round, a story about foreign interference was quickly fabricated, but when Telegram founder Pavel Durov hinted at foreign interference, it was dismissed.
The victory of a candidate backed by the main parties and minorities was not a surprise, as the media intensively worked to help him win, GFCN says. His image was carefully crafted by mainstream media outlets, while many people were led to believe that if his rival won, the country would exit the EU and NATO. Simion’s attempts to prove that Romania would not be isolated, including visits to Poland and Italy, "were not enough to make people trust him or believe that he has moved beyond the political activist he was years ago," the fact-checking network concludes.