Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, coming to you live from London.

Well, we start today with a shock election result in Romania. A brand new presidential candidate, Colleen Georgescu, has upended Romania's political scene by scoring the highest tally of votes in the

first round of the Eastern European country's presidential election. To many, Mr. Georgescu appears to

have come out of nowhere. He doesn't have the backing of a political party and he doesn't appear

to have a solid platform. What he does have is a strong following on

social media. Known by some as the TikTok candidate, the 62-year-old launched a hugely popular

social media campaign days before the vote, calling for an end to aid for Ukraine. Since winning the

first round of the vote, he's said the result is an

amazing awakening for the Romanian people. He'll face the center-right candidate, Elena

Lasconi, in a runoff election next month. Prime Minister Marcell-Trolaku failed to make the second

round. He's already resigned as leader of his Social Democratic Party.

The former Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponto, who's also from the SDP, said the result was completely

unexpected and would have a negative impact on Romania.

It's a big shock. It's first time the traditional parties are almost crushed in the presidential election.

It is a big, big reverse of the predictability of Romania.

And the next two weeks, taking into account that we will have also parliamentary an election and second round of presidential,

will give a lot of unpredictability. And that's a big

setback for Romania. Adrienne Asina is a member of the European Parliament from the far right

nationalist party, the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians, or AUR. He said Colleen Georgescu

had tapped into the concerns of many Romanians.

Georgescu, I think he's fighting for sovereignty and traditionalism.

His campaign emphasized with national independence, the protection of Romanian values,

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