Political analyst Radu Delicote, an expert in public communication, points out, for “Adevărul”, that as a rule the campaign for the Capital City Hall is one marked by emotional elements, and realistic themes tend to lose ground in front of anti-system positions.
Collage Daniel Băluță, Ciprian Ciucu, Cătălin Drula and Anca Alexandrescu PHOTO Collage / Facebook
The candidates for the Capital City Hall have already started the promotion before the official campaign, both online and on the ground, among the citizens of the city whom they are trying to convince to give them their vote, and the streets of Bucharest were studded with promotion boards. Some with smaller party logos than usual.
Others began their campaign by promising to carry on the legacy of former mayor Nicușor Dan, both directly and through association elements, from the themes and projects promoted for the Capital to the colors used in the campaign. Some even pointed to the support they enjoy from the current president.
Radu Delicote, political analyst and expert in public communication, issues a warning regarding the campaign that will start on November 22: “Always and always, I would like to liken the local elections to the presidential elections. I mean, when we vote for the mayor, when we vote for the president, we rarely look, and it’s normal, this is a psychological process, we rarely look at the rational elements or much less we look at the rational elements like themes, like proposals, like programs, but rather we go to the emotional elements, like we like or don’t like, the feeling they cause us, the associations they use. And here we actually see the pivot point of this campaign. It is a campaign of associations.
Each of the candidates is trying to associate with something. Once we have the image of the president, another time we have references from other sectors. So, things are built in such a way at the political message level that the associations will be the ones that will vote in the end, first of all. We will see if he will convince the electorate, but from what we see so far, each candidate has tried to build an image by association”.
Real campaign themes versus anti-system promotion
According to the analyst, important campaign themes for the Capital may lose to the detriment of the anti-system discourse, both opposition candidates and those in power, positioning themselves at the opposite pole of the current coalition, in order to promote themselves among voters.
“We cannot discuss real or realistic campaign themes when you have a very well-defined dichotomy between the candidates. That is, you have some candidates who are from the governing parties, but some of them attack the Government, some of them come with somewhat rational or somewhat current themes from the coalition, so who try to be anti-system, anti-coalition candidates. And on the other hand, strictly candidates who do not necessarily have an involvement in the current coalition of government and who only go on the idea of anti-system candidates, without any kind of realistic proposal for Bucharest.
Moreover, the General City Hall has no way of being today, at least at the organizational level, a city hall where you can realistically promote yourself with programs. Because we know what the organization is like at the general level, we know what the organization is like opposite the sector town halls”Radu Delicote points out.
“The general mayor is, apart from the president, the most voted politician in Romania”
“The General City Hall is a complicated city hall, but the general mayor is, apart from the president, the most voted in terms of number of votes, at least historically, the most voted politician in Romania. So the legitimacy that this post gives you, although it comes with a lot of burdens, with a lot of administrative complication, it comes with a very large political scope. Each of them will try to carve out a political career in the future, which, obviously, will depend very much also by parties and allies and coalitions”explains the political analyst.
“The moral problem is that we will have a mayor voted for with less than 30% of the votes of the citizens of Bucharest”
The candidates started their promotion a few weeks before the election campaign.
“I find it extremely interesting that it is a very short campaign. It has already started, we see things at the communication level already. It seems to me that things are very direct and already, easily, easily, I think the people of Bucharest are starting to get an idea of who to vote for. The moral problem is that, at the end of this campaign, we will have, with the best chances, a mayor voted with, realistically, less than 30% of the votes of the people of Bucharest. So, very few votes people are here. We can discuss and extrapolate that there are not so many with the right to vote in Bucharest, but these are technical elements that deserve a separate discussion. I am talking about the moral legitimacy of this mayor, who will be voted for by the total number of registered voters, who will also have to manage a work situation with the General Council, which is already welded in one form or another.”
A pre-campaign for the next election
The future mayor will also have to “the jump for the next campaigns”constantly having a competitor in opposition, Radu Delicote points out:
“What’s very interesting here is actually who will be in second place. Because, in terms of the number of votes and in terms of political and moral legitimacy, he may want to build his campaign for the General Mayor in the next two years, while the current term of the General Mayor lasts.
So basically, it’s two years that someone who comes in second will want to build, from a position, with constant messages, the portfolio of the future general mayor. The second and third places are the ones that will become very interesting at the level of communication, at the level of political positioning, at the level of the future campaign for the General City Hall and maybe who knows what other portfolios above”.
