Romanian far-right candidate prematurely and falsely declares himself the winner of the election, proceeds to confuse the flags of Romania and Chad
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.
…oh , man, that was a wall of text and a half…
I think he's taking a page out of trump's book and is gonna claim stolen election and stuff.
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.
Is there a party willing to change these things?
Appreciate the insight 👍
Not much of a Chad, is he?
I hear he wants to build a presidential vacation home on the virgin Islands.
No matter what the country is, these far righters are always idiots.
They're no idiots. They're calculated authoritarians trying to seize public narrative to usurp power illegally
Little of both
They are idiots who once read a book on how to become a dictator and now think they are hot shit.
All these extremists right wingers read the same book, since they all use the same tactics.
That makes them organized and dangerous idiots to me.
see also the flag of Liberia
Apparently Nicusor Dan won. Disaster avoided, I guess.
😮💨 also this makes the other guy look like even more of a doofus
Just doing a Big Lie. These dorks are still working from a century old playbook, they're just doing it on Xitter and propaganda rags.
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?
The low hanging fruit is the guy 1. Didn't actually win the election 2. And he declared himself president of the wrong country
The right wing are such liars that grammatical mistakes are the least of their problems
I guess the solution is to send him to Chad to go claim his presidency.
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
Well he's a Chad!
Seriously, I totally agree. It's dumb, and would have caused more legal problems had he won.
These people are like little belligerent kids that just can't help themselves not to do exactly the thing adults just said is not OK to do.
@Hubi Grok knows all too well.
Grok didn't seem to get why he wrote the flag of Chad though. I wonder if any other LLMs know the answer to that.
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
Nuff said.
One of those rare cases when I very much approve of A-not-so-I
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.
Would have confused it with Moldova instead, I suppose.
But yeah, of the MANY things I can throw at this guy, confusing 🇷🇴 with 🇹🇩 when tapping it on your phone is not it.
Mostly because I'm pretty sure I've done it myself more than once.
At a glance, when small, or on a bad monitor, they can also be confused with Belgium, which has black yellow red.
For me chad seems like a bit deeper red(on the emoji at least)
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.
One tiny victory at a time. Lets hope Poland and Portugal step up to rhe russians, too
Portugal did not and PiS is anti Russian, but also anti democracy. Not exactly a new idea that two nationalist groups hate each other.
Easy bait
https://xcancel.com/georgesimion/status/1924166718122783128#m
Tweet not found
Does xcancel (nice hostname) not show the tweet anymore when it has been deleted on xitter? I assume it has been deleted?
Yeah, it seems to have been deleted.
No, I am the real presidente of Cha- Romania.
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
You are referring to the flag of the Republic of Moldova, the Romanian flag doesn't have a symbol.
They look really similar though
🇮🇩 🇲🇨
🇸🇳 🇲🇱
🇳🇿 🇦🇺
🇻🇪 🇪🇨 🇨🇴
🇸🇮 🇸🇰 🇷🇺
🇱🇺 🇳🇱 🇭🇷 🇵🇾
🇱🇷 🇺🇸 🇲🇾
🇲🇽 🇮🇹
🇷🇴 🇹🇩
🇧🇭 🇶🇦
🇱🇮 🇭🇹
🇮🇳 🇳🇪
🇧🇴 🇬🇭
🇭🇺 🇹🇯
🇦🇷 🇳🇮 🇸🇻 🇭🇳
🇪🇬 🇮🇶 🇾🇪 🇸🇩 🇸🇾
The whole flag situation isn't really ideal.
Don't forget 🇮🇪 🇨🇮
And, if it’s been out in the sun for a while, 🇮🇹 can start to look like 🇮🇪
they look fine to me :P
Are you running something special?
It would be interesting to display the flag followed by the country code in a parenthetical.
I have another one for you: 🇦🇹 🇱🇻 On TV I often have to take a second look myself.
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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_and_coats_of_arms_of_the_Austrian_states
Salsburg, Austria:
Tyrol, Austria:
Upper Austria, Austria:
Vienna, Austria:
Voralberg, Austria:
Not to mention the state of Hesse in Germany:
And then Poland:
Monaco:
and Indonesia:
I zoomed lol
Jamaica's flag is pretty unique... Let's all copy theirs..
Only country flag without red, blue and white!
I like St Lucia's flag, quite unique but stays simple enough. 🇱🇨
🇧🇪🇩🇪
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).
If Bouvet Island ever changes their flag and all the fonts update to reflect that, there is going to be a lot of suddenly-confusing text out there!
When you are among the first: 🇸🇪 (first but we're at bro-war with them: 🇩🇰)
🇹🇼🇼🇸
🇱🇹🇲🇲 Myanmar why did you steal our flag and de saturate it?
🇺🇸🇺🇲
I always get India and Ireland confused.