Former Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta joined the race for May's presidential election re-run on Wednesday as the hard right worked to ensure they had a candidate in the contest after the ban on pro-Russian Calin Georgescu threw the vote wide open.

Romania’s largest far-right party is scrambling to find a candidate after the independent front-runner it supported was barred from May’s presidential election.

Călin Georgescu has sparked Romania’s deepest political crisis in decades, uniting Romanian nationalists, senior Trump administration officials and the Kremlin.