The campaign at the Capital City Hall started earlier. How candidates are promoted and what their plans are

The candidates for the Capital City Hall started their campaign, promoting themselves either on social networks or by walking around the city. For some, public notoriety was acquired long before this election race.

The most visible campaign is taking place at USR, where Cătălin Drula made a considerable advance. Recently, he told how he supported the current head of state, Nicușor Dan, in his campaign for the Capital City Hall, walking the streets and trying to convince people to vote for him. Now, the deputy is applying this experience in his own candidacy, touring Bucharest with his colleagues, including members of the Government, such as the Minister of the Environment, Diana Buzoianu.

Campaign on the street

He has already presented some big topics: the expansion of the metro, the illegal cutting of trees punished “symbolically” with 50 lei and the distribution of money between the sector mayors and the general mayor’s office, in the context of which he submitted to the Parliament a project for the transposition of the referendum organized by Nicușor Dan last year in the Capital.

The “dog” in the ministry

The first episode that brought him notoriety was the conflict with the Free Metro Union (USLM) and the evacuation of commercial premises from the underground. At that moment, the scene that became famous also took place, when Ștefan Paraschiv, the general director of Metrorex, entered a kiosk with a crowbar, which led Drula to declare: “A cartel is destroyed with a crowbar.”

Later, it was said about the former Minister of Transport that “he is a dog”. More precisely, PNL deputy George Stângă and the president of the Prahova County Council, Iulian Dumitrescu, were recorded by the DNA prosecutors right in the office of the Minister of Transport while they were asking Cătălin Drula to keep the heads of the Romanian Association for Saving Human Lives at Sea and the River Administration of the Lower Danube Galați in office. “I can’t say he’s a man, this Drula is a dog and we have to find a solution for him,” said the administrator of a company at one point.

A tough decision

The other two candidates of the coalition, from the PNL and from the PSD, have the advantage of leading a sector town hall, having been reinstated in the local elections last June, from where they can talk about their activity so far.

Ciprian Ciucu made the official announcement of his decision to run for the Capital City Hall in a post in which he states that “it was not an easy decision”. The mayor says, however, that he weighed things in the same way as the former mayor of the Capital, Nicușor Dan, did when deciding his candidacy for the presidency. “I sat a long time and weighed: where I can make a bigger positive impact. At the Capital City Hall or at the District 6 City Hall?”wrote Ciucu, telling his voters in sector 6 that it is “a message of continuity” and not one of separation, because he wants to put Bucharest “in order”.

He outlined some key themes, comparing Bucharest to other European capitals and highlighting the lack of heat and hot water, problems in public transport and run-down facades of buildings. These aspects will be part of the political program that he has already started to draft, stressing, however, that he will have to focus on “more modest but realistic things”.

“Sector 6 is almost finished, now it’s time to deal with all of Bucharest”, says Ciprian Ciucu.

From the team from Cotroceni, in the management of the sector mayor’s office

Ciucu was for one year, between 2000 and 2001, employed at the Public Relations department of the Presidency, during the leadership of Ion Iliescu.

He obtained his first mandate as mayor in sector 6 in the 2000 elections and is first vice-president of the PNL. In February 2023, he resigned from the leadership of PNL Bucharest, citing that he needs more time to manage the sector mayor’s office.

Personal lesson

The mayor of sector 4 was the last candidate of the coalition parties to announce his candidacy, waiting for the party’s vote. After the meeting of the PSD National Political Council, which validated his candidacy, Daniel Baluta made the official announcement on Facebook, explaining the reasons for the decision to enter the electoral race for the Capital.

“How did I get here? I’m going to start with a personal lesson I learned from my job as a doctor. When a person comes to you sick, you don’t start making plans for the future. First you treat what hurts, stabilize the patient’s general condition and restore his health. Only then can you build further, only then can you think about what’s next. It’s the same with a city. Bucharest needs to start a troubleshooting process. It needs to be put on its feet, to function day by day, to stop being a continuous construction site, and then we can build its future together.” wrote Daniel Baluta.

Among other things, he spoke about the traffic in Bucharest, the lack of hospitals and hot water, stating that it is not an “impossible dream”, but a reality that he demonstrated: “We DID it. We showed that it is possible. And further, together we MAKE Bucharest the capital we all want”.

Scandal with Nicușor Dan in the center of the Capital

In another post, the mayor talks about the work to consolidate the floor in Piața Unirii, the place where, just a year ago, he was in a public conflict with the current president, Nicușor Dan, over the authorization to start the works. At that moment, the two put on a real show, surrounded by bulldozers, policemen, gendarmes and journalists.

Daniel Băluță has been mayor of sector 4 since 2016, currently in his third term, and member of the General Council since 2012. Before becoming mayor, he held the position of deputy mayor of sector 4 for three years, between 2013 and 2016.