DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
George Simion rejects the exit poll soon after it is released, says he is ahead in the presidential vote.
Centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, who has pledged to clamp down on corruption and is staunchly pro-European Union and -NATO, is on course to win the presidential election in Romania.
Exit polls indicated that Dan was ahead with 54.9 percent of Sunday’s votes. His rival, hard-right nationalist George Simion, was at 45.1 percent.
Simion rejected the exit poll soon after it was released, saying his count estimates have him at 400,000 votes more than Dan.
Dan had campaigned on a pledge to fight rampant corruption and keep Romania firmly within the European mainstream.
Turnout was significantly higher in Sunday’s run-off and is expected to play a decisive role in the outcome.
Official results are expected to come in later on Sunday.
The rerun of the election was held after the cancellation of November’s presidential vote plunged Romania into its worst political crisis in decades.
Romania’s political landscape was thrown into turmoil when a top court annulled the previous election, in which far-right outsider Calin Georgescu topped the first-round polls after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference, which Moscow denied.
Simion appeared alongside Georgescu at a Bucharest polling station on Sunday and told reporters that he voted against the “humiliations to which our sisters and brothers have been subjected”.
“We voted against abuses and against poverty,” he said. “I voted for our future to be decided only by Romanians, for Romanians and Romania. So help us God!”
More to come …