Eduard Hellvig, former head of the SRI, criticizes the choice of the governing coalition for the capital's mayor's office, in the person of the doctor Cătălin Cîrstoiu, noting that he is a “candidate removed from the job”, who “does not scare or scare anyone”.
Eduard Hellvig, critics for the candidate of the Coalition in Bucharest. Photo: Inquam
“From the rounds of negotiations that painted our televisions for several weeks in a row, a good common candidate to be placed in the museum of complete concord resulted. It doesn't scare or scare anyone.
If we're wondering who he really represents, I think the answer is in the previous sentence. And the really significant question is why would you pass up candidates with good numbers to invest your trust in someone known only in the medical community?
Where does the full confidence in the “perfect apolitical” come from to be sent to draw votes from both the left and the right? What is known upstairs and not told downstream? We know for sure that it is not some survey, some measurement or some robot portrait of a technocrat of urbanism”. wrote Eduard Hellvig on X (formerly Twitter).
Candidate fired
The former head of the SRI claims that the manager of the University Hospital is an “independent” fired from his job, meant “to apparently save us from the agony of ideological doubts”.
“Tcoincidentally, we were talking here three weeks ago about the independents: “However, new people have nothing to lose, no career to defend, no reputation to preserve. When the show starts to whistle, they grab their make-up kit and go on their way.” Probably those who chose him rely on something unseen and unknown, so that they do not suspect their candidate of later aiming either at too much independence or at a still more important public position. They probably have an unshakable bromance.
Since the electorate can only choose from what is on the list, and not from an infinite number of potential candidates, it therefore matters which offer is placed on the ballot. Suddenly it becomes more relevant to be a candidate than to be a vote-getting candidate.
The other candidates are in charge of collecting votes. Or the party. Or friends…
As with any wax figure, however, a sudden rise in temperature can ruin the whole story. And the statue's facade is softened, allowing the structure behind to be seen and the words of Abraham from almost two centuries ago to be heard: “You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all people all the time,” Hellvig claims.
Who chose whom
The manager of the Bucharest University Hospital, Cătălin Cîrstoiu, is the PNL-PSD candidate for the Capital City Hall. The leaders of the Coalition and Ctălin Cîrstoiu avoided saying who approached whom for the doctor to enter the race.
“We talked all the time, I think in the last two years extraordinarily much, about the project called the University Hospital. The University Hospital is a factory that has almost all the administrative aspects that a territorial administrative unit has, especially since, honestly, it is about the size of 3 large municipalities in terms of investment, budget, concerns related to the patient's well-being (..) Still talking about activities that are or are not related to medicine, we slowly came to lead the discussion to the needs of the city, because the hospital is not outside the city, but in its heart. Then, I think it was the starting point of a joint project together with Mrs. Gabriela Firea and Mr. Sebastian Burduja and we found that it can be a reality, an objective that we can assume regarding these elections from 2024“, explained the doctor at the event where he was officially presented as the candidate of the Coalition, answering the journalists' questions.
“I think that we still need to understand this activity of selecting a specific person for a specific position as an openness that political parties must have towards new people in politics, who have performed in the professional fields where they operate“, said Nicolae Ciucă, noting that such analyzes are carried out at each party, where the peaks in certain fields are sought.
“That's how I think Mr. Doctor was chosen, and I don't think other explanations would justify the decision“, said the PNL leader, later supplemented by Marcel Ciolacu: “I am not firmly convinced that we chose the doctor, but he chose us“.
