By Janis Laizans and Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST (Reuters) -Cornelia Borta sees no alternative to far-right politician Calin Georgescu as Romania’s next president, even though on Tuesday Georgescu was barred from standing in the rerun of a presidential election in May.
Borta left her young child with relatives in the eastern county of Neamt and travelled to Bucharest to protest outside Romania’s top court on Tuesday as it upheld the central election authority’s decision on Sunday to bar him.
Georgescu, 62, won a first round of voting running as an independent in last year’s election but the result was annulled by the Constitutional Court in December because of allegations of Russian election meddling.
“There is no alternative, Calin Georgescu for president,” Borta, a 38-year-old housewife, said outside the Constitutional Court.
She said, without citing evidence, that there was clear proof that he would have won the election because “they did everything in their power to eliminate him from the race.”
“We must take to the streets,” she said. “We are in a very, very critical moment and the only solution is peace. All Romanians must go out in the street and prove we want peace.”
Speaking at the same protest, 45-year-old Marinela Simona said she would nullify her vote.
“I will protest in my own way,” she said. “I don’t see another president apart from Calin Georgescu. I will go to the vote, I will draw a box (on the ballot), write his name and put the stamp on it.”
Georgescu, who has praised Romania’s 1930s fascist leaders as heroes and martyrs and who admires both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin is under criminal investigation on six counts.
“Romanians wanted change, they still do,” 80-year-old pensioner Constantin Matache said outside the headquarters of the central election authority. “There are certain people … who are abusing (power) and they dictate the current politics as they wish.”
The far right has four days to find a replacement candidate. A small group of Georgescu supporters smashed pavements and set rubbish bins ablaze in Bucharest on Sunday.
“The parties’ voters are still there and they will head towards an anti-system option,” said Cristian Pirvulescu, a political scientist.
(Additional reporting by Andreea Campeanu; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Nick Zieminski)
