BUCHAREST, Romania, March 16, (AP): Romania’s electoral body Saturday rejected the candidacy of a controversial far-right politician in the presidential election rerun in May, but approved George Simion, the leader of the country’s most popular far-right party. The Central Election Bureau, or BEC, rejected Diana Sosoaca's bid, which was filed on Thursday in the capital, Bucharest.

She said she will appeal the bureau’s decision, which has to be submitted to the Constitutional Court within 24 hours. The bureau said in its decision that it barred the pro-Russia Sosoaca, a former lawyer and leader of the far-right nationalist S.O.S. Romania party, from entering the race on the same grounds that she was excluded from last year's annulled election.

The CCR argued that her public discourse, including opposition to Romania’s European Union and NATO memberships, made her unfit to uphold the constitutional obligations of the presidency. In a public letter posted online and addressed to US President Donald Trump after the bureau's decision, Sosoaca, 49, claimed that "the democratic system has been destroyed and that the elections have already been rigged.”

The court’s decision to bar her from last year's race drew strong criticism from some civil rights groups and politicians, who denounced it as undermining democracy or politically motivated. However, on Saturday, the election bureau validated the candidacy of Simion, who leads the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which is Romania's second biggest party in the legislature.

Simion, 38, who is under criminal investigation for inciting violence after last year’s first-round winner Calin Georgescu was barred this week from entering the May rerun, has expressed concerns that he could also be excluded from the upcoming race. "Now let’s see if we can pass the CCR and return to democracy,” he wrote on Facebook.

Simion - who came fourth in the first round of last year’s race with 13.8% of the vote - has denied any wrongdoing and claimed the investigation is politically motivated. "I risk being subjected to the same abusive treatment … If they eliminated two, they think they can eliminate a third,” he told a news conference Friday after filing his candidacy. Simion has stirred controversy on occasion.