The Electoral Office of the municipality of Bucharest announced on Thursday that it has validated nine candidacies for the position of general mayor. Beyond well-known politicians such as Gabriela Firea, Sebastian Burduja, Nicușor Dan, Diana Șoșoacă or Cristian Popescu Piedone, lesser-known names also entered the electoral race.
submission of candidacy Municipal Electoral Office, Sebastian Burduja PNLPhoto: Inquam Photos / George Călin
The Electoral Office admitted the candidacies for the position of general mayor of the Capital submitted by: Gabriela Firea – PSD, Sebastian Burduja – PNL, Nicusor Dan – independent, Cristian Victor Popescu Piedone – PUSL, Diana Şoşoacă Iovanovici – SOS Romania, Dorin Iacob – Right Alternative Party , Mihai Adrian Enache – AUR, Alexandru Pânişoara – Romanian Environmentalist Party (PER), Filip Constantin Titian – independent. Two applications were rejected. It is about Dorel Constantin Onaca from the PRM and Vasile Iustiuc, independent.
For the General Council of the Municipality of Bucharest (CGMB), the lists of candidates submitted by the PNL, the United Right Alliance (USR – PMP – Forţa Dreptei), the Romanian Ecologist Party (PER), SOS Romania, PUSL – the Humanist Social Liberal Party and AUR were admitted .
The lists of candidates submitted for the CGMB by the PSD (Cătălin Bulgariu is domiciled in Ilfov, not in Bucharest), the REPER Party and the Right Alternative Party – AD were admitted in part.
Who are the nine candidates for Bucharest mayor’s office?
Gabriela Firea, PSD candidate, at the Capital City Hall, he is 53 years old and is a PSD senator and president of the Bucharest PSD organization. Gabriela Firea expressed her desire to enter the race for the mayor of the Capital since last year, but PSD president Marcel Ciolacu avoided supporting her candidacy citing the low percentages in the polls. After the failure of the nomination of the independent Cătălin Cîrstoiu, Marcel Ciolacu appealed to Gabriela Firea to assume the candidacy from the PSD in the Capital.
Gabriela Firea was, between June 2016 and October 2020, general mayor of the Capital. During his term as mayor, Firea made several controversial decisions, including the establishment of the 20 municipal companies that doubled the public administration.
Before being general mayor and getting involved in politics, Gabriela Firea was a journalist, known to the public for her moderate shows on TVR, Antena 3 and Antena 1. She is married to the mayor of Voluntari, Florentin Pandele, and they have two children together.
Sebastian Burduja, PNL candidate, is 38 years old and is currently Minister of Energy and President of PNL Bucharest. Burduja was proposed by the PNL as a candidate for the Capital City Hall after the PSD-PNL Coalition had to withdraw the doctor Cătălin Cîrstoiu.
Burduja entered Romanian politics in 2016, with the establishment of the Youth Civic Action Party (PACT) and ran as an independent candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, but failed to enter Parliament. In 2019, PACT was assimilated by PNL, and Burduja became the president of PNL sector 1. He ran for a deputy mandate in 2020 on the PNL list and in 2022, in the Nicolae Ciucă Government, he was appointed Minister of Digitalization.
Nicuşor Dan, the candidate of the United Right Alliance, is 54 years old, is a mathematician by profession and is the current mayor of the Capital. Nicușor Dan is running for a new mandate from the United Right Alliance. He was the founder and former president of USR and ran in 2020 supported by PNL and USR-PLUS. With a doctorate in mathematics in France, he is the founder of the association Save Bucharest, which campaigns for compliance with the law in the urban development of Bucharest.
After four years at the Capital City Hall, Nicușor Dan managed to block the chaos in real estate development or the rehabilitation of tram lines, but he also has many unfulfilled promises.
Mihai Adrian Enache, AUR candidate, until March 2023, he was executive director of the Development Directorate of the Sector 4 City Hall, led by Daniel Băluță. According to the CV posted by the candidate on his own website, Enache is 36 years old, he is a member of the AUR and in the field of education he has passed two faculties and a master’s degree. Inside the AUR he coordinated the AUR Mobile Hospital.
Cristian Popescu Piedone, PUSL candidate, is 61 years old and is currently the mayor of Sector 5. Piedone completed high school at the age of 32, and in 1994 he joined the PSD and, under the party’s logo, became general councilor and inspector at the Sector 5 City Hall. Also , was mayor of Sector 4 in Bucharest, joined the Conservative Party (Dan Voiculescu’s party), then moved for a few months to the UNPR led by Gabriel Oprea. He later returned to the party of Dan Voiculescu, the current PUSL.
Piedone was twice voted mayor of Sector 4 and resigned after the tragedy in Club Colectiv, produced on October 30, 2015. In September 2020, he became the new mayor of sector 5.
In 2022, Piedone was sentenced definitively to 4 years in prison for abuse of office in the Colectiv club fire case and was released on June 21, 2023, after being acquitted by the supreme court. In June 2023, Piedone resumed his mandate as mayor of Sector 5.
Piedone is accused of conflict of interest by the National Integrity Agency, which accuses him of appointing his son-in-law to the commission for the sale of commercial premises.
Diana Şoşoacă Iovanovici, SOS Romania candidate, she is the president of the party and a senator. She was elected in 2020 as a senator from the AUR, but was expelled from the party a few months after taking office.
Sosoacă became known through the actions in which she campaigned against anti-COVID measures. She attracted attention in the St. Andrew pilgrimage scandal. It was the lawyer of the Archbishop of Tomis, IPS Teodosie, who sued the authorities to lift the restrictions.
At the end of 2023, Diana Șoșoacă registered an increase in the polls of over 5% based on anti-system speeches.
Dorin Iacob, candidate from the Right Alternative Party, he is 64 years old. Former SRI officer during the Virgil Măgureanu period, he is recommended as a political analyst. According to G4 media, he was the right-hand man and chief of staff of Virgil Măgureanu, the first head of the SRI. He founded a party with him that later merged with the PD led at the time by Traian Băsescu.
Dorin Iacob was among the politicians who constituted (in 2003) the Alliance Justice and Truth DA. He was part of the limited leadership of the Alliance for the campaign for the presidential elections, later won by Traian Băsescu. After the 2005 presidential elections, Dorin Iacob retired from political activity and devoted himself, in particular, to business and political consulting.
In 2009, he supported the candidacy of Mircea Geoană for the Presidency of Romania and then got involved in supporting Victor Ponta in the 2014 elections.
Alexandru Pânişoara, the candidate of the Romanian Environmentalist Party (PER), he is an architect by profession and a former PNL member. According to HotNews.ro, Alexandru Pânișoară is a licensed urban planner at UAIM Bucharest and a graduate of the “Urban Law and Territorial Planning” Master’s Degree at the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest. He is also the president of the Association for Urban Planning Law, which stood out in the last year by challenging in court the decisions of the General Council suspending the 5 District PUZs that concreted hundreds of hectares of green space and allowed the construction of blocks between houses. But he lost all the lawsuits.
In September 2021, Pânișoara’s name appeared in a PNL scandal. More precisely, he, as a member of the PNL Sector 1, challenged the candidacy of Florin Cîţu for the leadership of the party, on the grounds that it violates the principles and values of the formation. PNL Sector 1 publicly announced then that it was distancing itself from this initiative.
Philip Constantine Titian he is 61 years old and is a neurosurgeon by profession. In 2020, he ran as an independent candidate for the District 4 City Hall.
The electoral campaign will start on May 10 and end on June 8, at 7:00 a.m.
