I don't have a clear answer on that for you, but nobody was disqualified in this situation as the election was annulled and will restart from scratch.
This hypothetical situation though is a bit unlikely, as we're talking about quite a lot of money to pump into someone's campaign and anyone doing this will still be subject to attempting to manipulate the electoral process if they do not abide by the law, which could land them in jail and lead to an annulment of the electoral process.
Sure, but right now we're talking about a situation in which quite a lot of money has been pumped into someone's campaign! This situation is proof that people are willing to interfere in the election. The problem is that once you introduce the idea that the election can be "annulled" a bunch of people are going to be motivated to hack the election to get it "annulled" in some way.
> a bunch of people are going to be motivated to hack the election to get it "annulled" in some way.
There will be trials for this, and both the people who bought the ads (if they can be found), but more importantly the media publishers who pocketed the millions will have to answer questions to prove this was legal.
You can't unilaterally "pump some millions" to buy some electoral ads. Someone pocketed some millions and will need to show receipts.
As you well know since you are Romanian there are not many cases of people tried and in jail in Romania for corruption.
Now take a state actor and imagine that they are responsible. Let's not kid ourselves and pretend there will be repercussions for this mess except - if possible - make people trust even less the 'system'.
Not many cases? There are many people tried and jailed for corruption, including previous mayors, senators, ministers, more than one prime minister even. Of the many possible critiques of Romania, not jailing corrupt politicians is among the weaker ones.
Most of those cases of even the prime ministers were just for show. Getting a suspended punishment while not having to pay anything back from bribery and no repercussions. This is equivalent to how I punish my kid, stay in the corner for five minutes and promise you don't do it again.
If you also relatively think the couple that are actually in jail they are too few for the amount of politicians or general corruption that is in prevalent Romania.
"but nobody was disqualified in this situation as the election was annulled and will restart from scratch" - how is this logical?
Nothing will change from the annulled election to the new election (candidates will not be invalidated, TikTok will still be there). So if the annulled election was invalid on whatever criteria, the new election would also be invalid on the same criteria...
This hypothetical situation though is a bit unlikely, as we're talking about quite a lot of money to pump into someone's campaign and anyone doing this will still be subject to attempting to manipulate the electoral process if they do not abide by the law, which could land them in jail and lead to an annulment of the electoral process.