The funniest part about all of this was that the exit polls were heavily biased against him. Like (last night was hectic so pardon my rounding errors) Nicusor Dan had 55% while this clown had 45% coming out of the exit polls, and yet he STILL claimed he’d won :facepalm:
Then he tried to pull a MAGA stunt and tweeted “I am the president of the romanian people, count the votes correctly!” Before finally conceding victory, all within the span of 3 hours. Needless to say, last night was a bit of a rollercoaster.
For more context, at least how I saw this crapshot of an election, this far-right candidate, Simion, capitalized on the fact that there’s almost 6 million Romanians who’ve left their home country bound for the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany etc. He promised to bring them home, offered 2-room appartments at 35000€ (the Simion Plan he called it), bogus claims, promised to bring back industry into the country etc etc.
Thing is , here in Romania the president has less powers than you might expect. He’s basically responsible for foreign affairs and representation, chief of the millitary and armed forces, and has the power to dissolve Parliment, but that’s about it. So even if he wanted to do the things he claimed he’d do, he couldn’t.
It’s sad to see so many people voted for him. He’s riding off the backs of desperate people, who left families behind because doing, say, construction in Romania barely makes you a living wage. But the cognitive dissonance is what gets me: Simion was mostly voted by Diaspora, or the Romanians living in other countries. How can you, a Romanian living in let’s say Germany, vote for someone who has an isolationist policy, who says “hurr durr EU bad”, while benefitting from all the EU has to offer? It’s simply insane.
It’s sad to see so many people voted for him. He’s riding off the backs of desperate people, who left families behind because doing, say, construction in Romania barely makes you a living wage.
While we're talking about Austria, if we're going to a subnational level, check out the Austrian state flags. Over half of them are just a red-and-white horizontal stripe:
Also
🇧🇻 🇳🇴 🇸🇯
"These are all the flag of Norway" you might say, and that is correct. But one is for Bouvet Island, one is for Norway, and one is for Svalbard and Jan Mayen (in that order, here). Norway's national day was recently and it is fun every year to see so many people celebrating Bouvet Island (it shows up first in alphabetical lists).
Can we talk about how "I am the new president of Romania" in itself is an absolutely stupid phrasing to use when prematurely declaring yourself the winner of an election?
If there is a single common thread that ties together the modern hard right upsurge is that it is absolutely fueled by the most transparent of idiocies that by convention we are expected to accept as everyday business
Tried deepseek-r1, with internet search. It was clueless, and the I specifically asked why he might have mixed the flags up.
Given that Romania's flag (a double-headed eagle with two golden wings, red tails, and alternating horizontal stripes) is distinctly different from Chad's flag (which features an olive branch, sun, and crescent moon within a blue background), it is plausible that the mix-up occurred due to a simple error or oversight in copying text
They’re extremely similar, Romania has a slightly lighter blue, but they’re both blue, yellow, and red vertical tricolors. Romania used to be more distinct, with a coat of arms in the middle, but that was removed after the fall of communism. Chad has complained, as they had the flag first, but Romania hasn’t done anything. Maybe this will prompt the new president to do something.
If I were a person wanting to be a far right leader of a country. Romania is one of the last places I would pick. At least when looking back at how the last dictatorial leader of the country left office.
TBF those flags are waaaaay too similar, and leaving the little logo off someone might just think the artist is being a little lazy or the design was simplified for emoji form. its happened before.
edit: lol, its hilarious to me that people are downvoting this. are they not similar? Or are your feelings just hurt?
One has the symbol and the other one dont. So its similar in colors but not similar enough, especially for a local politician, to confuse them
For the flag untrained me: i would still see enough difference to check which flag is the correct one