Welcome to the Inquiry with me, Tanya Beckett on the BBC World Service.
One question, four expert witnesses, and an answer.
It was the shock election result that plunged Europe's sixth most populist member state into chaos and sent ripples across the continent.
On 24 November last year,
the first round of presidential elections in Romania returned as winner a runner who had only weeks before polled at less than 10% of the vote.
Kyleen Georgescu, a far right independent candidate, had campaigned on a NATO sceptic,
anti EU platform and now looked well positioned to win the runoff ballot to become Romania's next president.
Until, that is, there came another astonishing turn of events.
Serious allegations emerged over the legitimacy of Georgescu's campaign.
The Constitutional Court annulled the vote and barred him from standing again.
The two rounds of elections are now due to be rerun in May,
but Georgescu's exit from the race has cast a long shadow over the nation's politics.
This week on the Inquiry, we're asking what will happen now with Romania's elections.
Part 1 the communist era.
In order to understand how Romania's politics found themselves in such a turbulent state,
we need to go back in the country's history over 30 years.
I've studied Romania my whole professional career as a political scientist,
and I have also worked for the Romanian government.
Our first expert witness is Veronica angel,
assistant professor at the Robert Schumann center at the European University Institute.