Was President Nicușor Dan Complicit in Romania’s December 2024 Electoral Coup?
On November 24, 2024, shortly after Romania’s polling stations closed in the first round of the presidential election, Nicușor Dan appeared on B1 TV and issued a stark warning. The vote count was incomplete, the ballots from Romanians residing outside of the country were still in transit, and there was no official indication of which candidates had qualified for the second round. Yet Dan insisted that authorities should immediately investigate foreign-backed influence on TikTok, track unexplained campaign financing, and scrutinize the unexpected surge of outsider candidate Călin Georgescu. At a moment when the public still waited for results, Dan appeared to speak about a crisis that had not yet been declared:
We must urgently investigate how TikTok has been used in this campaign, where the money behind these networks comes from, and whether someone is being promoted through hidden funding that influences the vote. The state institutions need to act now.
These statements frame Dan’s interest in digital-campaign irregularities. However, the intervening question remains: did Nicușor Dan speak as an independent observer, or was he executing a script written elsewhere?
Weeks later, the same concerns he raised on air became the basis on which Romania annulled the first round of the election. The sequence of events inevitably invites scrutiny, especially when the man who framed the supposed threat subsequently benefited from the restructured electoral calendar and rose to the presidency.
Dan has repeatedly framed the 2024 election environment as being under siege by misinformation. In an interview the following year, he expanded on the topic by calling for a redefinition of regulatory and institutional power over online influence, stating that Romania must debate “what is the role of the National Audiovisual Council, how far freedom of expression goes, when misinformation must be curbed.” These are measured positions. Yet they do not explain the precision of his late-night television intervention in November 2024.
According to the video transcript circulating online, Dan’s remarks implied that the escalation surrounding Georgescu’s popularity was not merely unexpected but already known to state institutions. This suggestion, if true, would mean that intelligence services or political actors anticipated Georgescu’s breakthrough and regarded it as a threat even before citizens themselves knew the outcome. This would place Dan’s televised appearance within a framework of coordination rather than coincidence. It would recast him not as a man reacting to emerging chaos, but as the first visible executor of a plan to delegitimize the vote and restructure the race.
The legal justification for the annulment has been defended by state institutions, and the subsequent investigations raised plausible concerns about foreign-influenced TikTok activity. If Dan was correct in his warning, then he might, one day, be regarded as the politician who acted earlier than the system could react. Yet the accuracy of his prediction is precisely what complicates the narrative. If a statesman warns of an emergency before anyone else sees it, is he observant…or informed?
The Critical Questions are: why did Dan speak at that precise moment, before counts were concluded? Who equipped him with details about TikTok campaigns, money flows and the ‘plan’ to insert him into the race? Is there documentation (emails, intelligence logs, internal memos) that connects Nicușor Dan’s appearance to a directive from a party, institution or intelligence agency? With Georgescu’s campaign later named in intelligence leaks as benefiting from undeclared funds and bot-amplified TikTok activity, how did Nicușor Dan’s statement align with those subsequent findings?
For a president who built his career on independence from traditional political networks, this matter cuts sharply at the question of authorship. Was his path to power forged in defense of democracy, or engineered through its suspension?
Whether Dan is innocent, manipulated or complicit remains to be proven. But one thing is clear: his televised intervention did not follow the democratic process, it preceded it. The sequence is unusual: a politician (at that point, Mayor of Bucharest) – later on, candidate and winner of the Presidential election), speaks of investigation, annulment, foreign influence and campaign finances BEFORE official results are published.
Dan may yet be cleared of direct wrongdoing. Or a full investigation may reveal a web of coordination and strategy. Until then, the legitimacy of his presidency is shadowed by the question: did he warn of a crisis, or was he part of it?
by I. Constantin
