Aka “when people look at us it is entirely organic but the only reason they would look at that guy is he is paying for it”.

The other parties reported spending as per the law, and this guy didn't. You can't run a campaign with no money, and he had no real grass-roots support (he was polling below 5% in all polls).

> You can't run a campaign with no money, and he had no real grass-roots support

The fact he won the first round contradicts you on both points.

You seem to think your statements are axiomatic, but they have no basis.

They do have a basis, as the candidate had flyers printed out, paid ads on social media as well as paid ads that were not marked as political ads, which is against the law, and so is not reporting campaign spending.

Political polls from across the spectrum showing him polling poorly as well as not being an established candidate is what led to this whole investigation starting up to figure out exactly how he garnered so much support so fast.

> They do have a basis, as the candidate had flyers printed out, paid ads on social media as well as paid ads that were not marked as political ads, which is against the law, and so is not reporting campaign spending.

Did he pay for them? And we all know polls miss things they don’t know about or want to find. As long as the ballots were counted accurately the problem was not the campaign he was running, but the ineptitude of the pollsters.

As discussed at length elsewhere in this thread this whole thing opens up so many new ways to abuse the system Romania simply will not be able to have an election anyone believes in again for a generation.