Can hot water change a mayor?

September 27: Romanian municipal elections
Results in Bucharest:
General councilors (seats)
Social Democrat Party (PSD) - 21
Save Romania Union - Plus Alliance (USR-PLUS) - 17
National Liberal Party (PNL) - 12
Popular Movement Party (PMP) - 5

The city of Bucharest, home to 1.83 million people, has experienced serious issues with hot water over the past several years. Last year, aging infrastructure meant that the municipal provider was losing 2000 tons of hot water per hour, or about 170,000 euros ($199,000) per day. Thousands could not take hot showers. Bucharest is one of the last cities in Europe with such an extensive and centralized heating system. Some parts are more than 40 years old. As a Romanian joke says: sometimes hot water comes, but it’s cold.   

Lack of hot water, lack of real communication with citizens, abuse of power, and corruption can change mayors. On September 27, in a nationwide municipal election, the mayor of Bucharest, Gabriela Firea, lost her mandate as a result of her bad infrastructure management and the constant degradation of the capital city. In total, five out of seven socialist mayors – Bucharest comprises six different sectors with their own mayors, apart from the general municipality - lost their mandates. In most cases, the municipalities will now be led by mayors from Save Romania Union (USR), a liberal progressive party.

The mayoral race changed the political landscape in some important cities; mayors supported by traditional political parties have lost their place as a result of a more diverse political offering, discontent with the activity of previous administrations, the continuous electoral fall of the Social Democrat Party after years of accusation of corruption and clientelism. Still, overall, the country remained divided between the socialists and the liberals.

Traditional socialist strongholds held by the so-called “local barons,” local or regional politicians that control entire regions, saw themselves booted out. In Vrancea, Marian Oprișan (PSD), who has been the subject of criminal investigations, finally ended his term as head of the county council, a seat he has held since 1995. But in the small town of Deveselu, the community re-elected PSD mayor Ion Aliman, despite the fact that he had recently died of COVID-19 (they said they wanted to honor his memory).

The local elections were initially scheduled for June 2020. First in April and then again July, the government of Romania, which is made up of the center-right National Liberal Party (PNL), decided to postpone the vote to September 27. It seemed to be the right decision at the time, given that in April too little information was available about the nature of Covid-19 and the manner in which the pandemic would evolve. But in September, the number of cases in Romania was even higher than it had been in June, and authorities had to face the issue of organizing elections in parallel with opening schools and venues like restaurants or cinemas. On September 27, the number of daily newly confirmed cases was 1,438 nationwide. That number is growing as I write. Even though the government and local authorities are imposing restrictions in some cities, citizens seem to have little appetite to follow the rules. While theaters and restaurants are closed in Bucharest, religious pilgrimages still take place in Iasi, the location of the relics of Saint Parascheva, but also one of the counties with a high number of infected persons.

The government seemed surprised in dealing with Covid-19. Regulations defining how people could vote in a safe manner during the pandemic proved to be late and rather incomplete. The government issued rules for sanitary safety for the election campaign on the night of August 27, hours before it was set to begin. The rules included limitations on the number of participants in electoral meetings, obligations to wear masks and disinfect one’s hands, recommendations to reduce contact when using printed materials, and limiting door-to-door campaigning to groups of no more than two. 

Campaign teams roamed the city gathering support signatures to register candidates, knocking on doors and talking to citizens on the streets. The number of election-related events was lower than in previous years. Although authorities allowed competitors to collect support signatures through electronic platforms on the internet, most of the political parties used the classical, offline method.

But there was no time for an information campaign about health safety directed toward political parties and voters. Those in isolation or quarantine who did not possess documents could not request access to a mobile ballot box. No other alternative methods – such as the postal voting that could have been introduced for these limited categories – were made available.

The number of political parties tripled in comparison to 2016, to a total of 186. This did not mean that parties got rid of controversial candidates: some had criminal records, including for corruption or violence or were proven to have been collaborators of the former Securitate, the communist secret service, often associated with the PSD. The former president Traian Basescu, candidate for the general municipality was declared last year a former collaborator of the former Securitate. Seven more candidates for the 2020 elections have been declared collaborators. The representation of women remained low, around 22%, despite a Romanian law that requires party lists to represent both genders. 

The campaign lacked energy, especially in the large cities. In Bucharest, the main contenders didn’t debate but rather gave a series of monologues laden with accusations of corruption and bad practices, directed at their own supporters. While Gabriela Firea, the former mayor, led a campaign of self-victimization, some of the candidates from the center and right-wing parties talked about the corruption and bad management of their predecessors. Nicusor Dan, now mayor of Bucharest, based his campaign on corruption in the Bucharest general municipality, exposing the “octopus” of connections and clientelism that Firea and her husband, himself mayor of Voluntari, brought to the capital. Pollution, clientelistic employment in public institutions, bad infrastructure and the lack of running hot water – which reminds voters of the communist times – were the main topics of the campaign.

Yet while the content may have been dry, the campaigns themselves were  rather rich in cash. Candidates and political parties brought in around 185 million lei, or $45 million, a record compared to the previous local elections. These sums come from candidates’ own contributions as well as donations, loans and state subsidies. The sources of funding are regulated by the Permanent Electoral Authority, but a rather limited level of information is published.

Some of the funds may have also come from the government itself, as an indirect support: In May, the Government opened a fund of 40 million euros ($46 million) to promote Covid-19 related campaigns. In reality, the allocation was seen a source of buying media influence by the current government. During the campaign, the government allocated around 1.3 billion lei ($314 million) for debts of local administrations. Although almost all the municipalities received funds, some of the highest transfers have been made to mayors of the PNL party, the party that supported Romania’s current president. Expert Forum, a Bucharest based think tank where I coordinate a program on elections and political clientelism, has shown that in the past 15 years significant funds for infrastructure development and the reserve funds are given preferentially and that higher sums are allocated before the elections.

The candidates who already held public positions had an upper hand. In Bucharest, in at least three cases, district commissions ruled that mayors used public funds to promote themselves outside the official campaigns. In Sector 1, Dan Tudorache, the former PSD mayor, distributed sanitary masks in combination with electoral materials. (This did not win him the election.)

The results of the local elections are important for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Right now, the elections are set for December 6, but according to a recent decision of the Constitutional Court, the date that was set by the government may change in the Parliament. This series of decisions would seem to continue the chaotic path of the electoral process in 2020. Overall, while the liberals in the PNL have a political interest to organize the elections sooner, according to the recent results, the social democrats may need more time to regroup and prepare their campaign for the elections and take advantage of any errors the government may create in the next period. Meanwhile, the people of Bucharest are still waiting for their much-desired hot water.