Kit Knightly – Off-Guardian March 6, 2025

In December 2024, a Romanian court cancelled the second round of the planned Presidential election and annulled the completed first round, citing (totally theoretical) “Russian interference”.

This caused massive protests in Romania, as you can imagine. The first round had been won by right winger Călin Georgescu following a social media-based campaign, and he was predicted to quite easily win the second round as well.

The Romanian opposition – denied a likely victory – took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Then, earlier today, the ECHR threw the case out without even hearing it. Apparently, the Romanian courts were perfectly within their rights to simply indefinitely postpone their election on the basis of unproven allegations, and all those people who already voted and wanted to vote again can just go to hell.

This is the ECHR, which lectures the world on rights and democratic norms on the regular.

And everyone is apparently just fine with it. It’s crazy.

Imagine the outrage in the media if Putin or Trump had suddenly cancelled elections they looked like losing because “they weren’t going to be fair”.

Anyway, now Călin Georgescu has been arrested, and his supporters are taking to the streets, while  the Romanian government is set to crack down on “conspiracy theories” and other “misinformation”.

This anti-election narrative is growing outside of Romania too.

Ukraine, of course, hasn’t had any elections in years either. They also outlawed certain political parties, religions and television channels. Meanwhile, laundering billions of dollars/pounds/euros through the Ukrainian government to boost the bottom line of arms manufacturers is considered “defending democracy”.

Last month, former EU chairman Thierry Breton remarked that they had already had to cancel the Romanian elections, and might have to do the same in Germany. (As it happens the “right side” won in Germany, so I guess that election was fair).

To a smaller extent, nine local elections across the UK have been “postponed” for at least a year for unknown reasons.

This is not about controlling the result because they could accomplish the same thing by just rigging it. We know they rig elections all the time.

No, this isn’t about controlling the votes it’s about controlling the language. Taking words and tearing them away from their old-fashioned definitions. Even inverting those meanings.

Seeding the idea that democracy doesn’t necessarily have to include voting and that, in the right circumstances, voting is actually anti-democratic and cancelling elections is more “democratic” than holding them.

“Democratic” can become a free-floating concept removed from real-world application. It’s just a nice thing, something that we and all the people on our side just are, and all the meanies on the other side are not.

We have “democracy”, and it doesn’t matter how many elections we cancel or political parties we ban, or religions we outlaw or journalists we lock up or outlets we censor…we still have democracy. Because now it means whatever we want it to mean.

Years ago, I reviewed a terrible documentary by David Dimbleby about Russia. At one point David essentially argues that just having elections does not mean you live in a democracy.

In my review I made the point that if they argue an election doesn’t make a democracy, they could eventually argue that you can be a democracy without having an election.

At the time I was mostly joking. More fool me.

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