Roxana Iliescu, elected local councilor in 2020 on the Pro Romania list, was one of the few opposition voices in the Timișoara City Council. Invited to PRESSALERT LIVE, the councillor, a lawyer by profession, confessed that the camp of Mayor Dominic Fritz proposed to her to join the team for the next elections, but the discussions did not go very far. After the experience of the last four years, Roxana Iliescu believes that she is ready to be the deputy mayor of Timișoara, in case her PSD colleagues support her for this position.
“They offered me to team up in 2024. There were some discussions that boiled down to the support I wanted for the resolution projects I proposed. I am convinced that by the way I got involved in this mandate, and my colleagues from the other parties, now I am really a member of the PSD and on the joint list of the PSD-PNL alliance, because I say that I had a good activity of local councillor. I am convinced that my colleagues from PNL would have been happy to be colleagues with me from 2024. I am ready to be the deputy mayor of Timisoara and it would be an honor if I had this chance. I would be honored to have the support of my colleagues from the Social Democratic Party for this position”, said Roxana Iliescu at PRESSALERT LIVE.
The councilor stated that she wanted from the beginning of her mandate to have a constructive attitude, but “I didn’t have anyone.”
“There are many examples, from the project with the Zoo to my involvement in various regulations that were voted, for terraces, for street trade, which were fundamentally changed by the current leadership of the mayor’s office. There are also my projects related to the demolition of garages and the development of much needed green spaces and parking spaces. I even said in the last plenary session, I reminded Mayor Fritz again, that less than a year has passed since I submitted six draft resolutions for the demolition of dozens of garages in several locations in Timișoara – Dacia, Gheorghe Lazăr and so on. They didn’t even reach the table of the local councilors. In June 2023 I submitted them, and they have been ignored so far. It is a clear abuse, because in the Administrative Code it is clearly stated, from the moment I register as a local councilor a draft decision, it must reach the local councilors within 30 days at most.
What I can do about it is less than what the people of Timisoara can do on June 9. Send him and his crew of incompetents home. I did my job as a local councillor. I am convinced that on many other issues, maybe even much more serious than this, that it is about Colterm or other situations, there are certain state bodies that I am convinced will do their duty, it is only a matter of time”, is Iliescu’s opinion.
“You can’t have a serious discussion with these people. Some see that they are now under the illusion that they can have a serious discussion with Mayor Fritz and his team. They will very quickly come to the conclusion that they are speechless, characterless and not serious people. You can’t even have serious political discussions with them. The rumors you heard were mostly true, but my intention was to build, to be able to do something positive for the people of Timisoara,” revealed the local councilwoman.
Even Ruben Lațcau did not escape criticism, Roxana Iliescu pointing out the serious problems faced by STPT and Colterm. “Every Timișoara resident who uses public transport feels directly what the situation is. Tens of minutes of waiting in the stations, the way they travel. At the moment we boast a state-of-the-art fleet, which we really have, but most of them are lying in the yard at STPT, because there are incompetents both in the town hall and in the management of this company. It’s downright stupid, out of 44 electric buses, I don’t know if 10-12 are running on the routes, because the mayor’s office – mayor Fritz, deputy Lațcau, who deals particularly with this society – were not able to build the infrastructure the charging stations so necessary for these buses to circulate around the city. The numbers say it, not me, we reached 93-94% of subsidized activity. I’ve said it since last year, under these conditions, let’s treat with utmost seriousness the objective of making public transport free in Timișoara”, is the opinion of the councilor who recently returned to PSD.
“During this four-year mandate, Mayor Fritz was in a continuous electoral campaign. I’ve said it before, I think it’s based on the good faith of the people of Timisoara. Because those who are not directly connected to the mayor’s office, the local council, when the public mayor comes out and makes a statement, any man of good faith does not start to play the detective, as we did. Even for me it wasn’t easy, because I had to take time to study documents and read the law, a man who has a family, jobs, he doesn’t stay all day to check what the mayor said, and he can’t imagine that he is lying nonchalantly and that things can often be exactly the opposite of how they are presented”, said Roxana Iliescu.
