AUR remains without a candidate in Sector 2 from Bucharest after Andrei Tinu announced that he is withdrawing from the race. The extremist party is rapidly losing members and candidates

Andrei Tinu, the candidate supported by AUR for the Mayor of Sector 2 in Bucharest, announced on Thursday morning that he is withdrawing from the electoral race. He joins a long list of candidates and leaders of organizations who left the extremist AUR party right on the eve of the elections, leaving the formation led by George Simion practically without candidates.

Andrei Tinu, the son of the former journalist Dumitru Tinu who made a career in the press both during the communist period and during the transition, wrote on a social network that “I decided to withdraw from the race for the position of mayor of Sector 2. It’s a step shared with that of the republican colleagues on the AUR lists for local councils in Bucharest. Why only now? Because today the candidacies are final and no Republican colleague has secured an eligible position”.

In the past three months, dozens of members and branch heads or candidates have left the extremist AUR party. In parallel, opinion polls show a stagnation or a decrease in voting intention for AUR.

The most recent rupture took place on May 1, when the candidate for the Buzău City Hall, Elena Năstăsoiu, left the formation together with half of the candidates on the list of the Local Council calling the party “the biggest poison for the Romanian electorate”.

In April, Mihail Dojană, the head of AUR Sector 1, and Valentin Florea, the candidate of the extremist AUR party for the City Hall of Sector 6, left the party speaking of “an illusion led by a Garbage” and “devils” who “have replaced the ideals” and of ” the people who don’t matter”, but only the “momentary interests of some people”.

These departures take place one month after the evacuation of the AUR Piatra Neamț branch, where the members of the organization together with its head resigned en masse just a few hours before George Simion arrived in the municipality, for a meeting with the electorate and the management of the organization. AUR coordinator Piatra Neamț reproached the party’s central leadership for imposing Marius Apopei, a former PNL county councilor, on the mayor’s office, and that the branch was not consulted before the decision.

Read more about AUR defections here