Quiet, the Elections are coming! European parliamentarians, Abandoned. Locals Capture Attention, But In Silence

Combining local elections with European Parliament elections, an approach where the benefits were presented with trumpets and trumpets by the ruling coalition parties when they made the decision, has turned into an approach in which the common man hardly knows that there is also the election for the European Parliament on June 9.

Although we arrived at the beginning of May, PSD and PNL have not launched the political program for the European Parliament, but they also do not make known the positions of the two large European political families of which they belong and which will give the key functions at the EU level. And this is happening in the conditions where more than a month has passed since the submission of the lists of candidates.

From south to north, the topic of MEPs is missing

A tour of the country from south to north shows before our eyes a shower of election banners and posters with candidates for mayors, for the headship of the County Council or branch presidents who are not candidates. Teleorman, Giurgiu, Ilfov, Ialomița, Prahova, Buzău, Vrancea, Bacău, Iași, Botoşani or Suceava are some areas where Libertatea only discovered messages and candidates for local.

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The exceptions are represented by some areas where one of the relevant leaders is a candidate for the EP, and in this case he is placed next to another local candidate. And this can be seen in Giurgiu, where Dan Motreanu sometimes appears next to Toma Petcu (candidate for CJ Giurgiu), Alexandru Muraru (candidate for an ineligible seat at EP), Dragoș Benea (PSD MEP who wants another mandate and who can be seen on some posters on DN2) or Gabriela Firea.

Firea is in a double position, as a candidate for the European Parliament, but also for the Capital City Hall, having election materials especially for the second candidacy, some of them placed uninspired, as can be seen.

Otherwise, there are no group photos of those who want to be in the European Parliament or photos of the two teams that are on the list of the alliance that is in pole position for a result close to 50% (after the redistribution).

No photos of Dan Barna, Vlad Voiculescu or other EP candidates are also those from the United Right Alliance. Instead, there are several banners with local candidates alongside USR leader Cătălin Drula, a party leader with presidential aspirations.

And in the case of AUR, a good part of their display is with the representation of a classical family, and next to it is one of the well-known rulers from the medieval period, especially Vlad Țepeș, but there are also banners with Mircea the Old, Michael the Brave, and the higher you go much in Moldova, those with Stephen the Great appear. Leaders like George Simion and Claudiu Târziu (the latter being also on the list for the European Parliament) can rarely be seen.

On the other hand, at the local level there can also be election materials with well-known politicians, but who are now in a shadow cone, but their image can still bring votes. This is the case of Liviu Dragnea, who can be seen on local posters in Suceava and Botoșani, as a supporter of the Sovereign Romania Movement.

No big rallies

Neither of the two major formations, PSD and PNL, will hold large-scale rallies to promote pro-European messages or local candidates. According to the information obtained by Libertatea, the strategy of these two formations is to mobilize the party “army” to carry the electoral messages and keep the voters in their grip. Organization is the key to the campaign, starting from each neighborhood or village.

An asset of the two parties is the fact that they have candidates in almost all administrative-territorial units, that is around 3,200. Being old formations, they managed to cover all localities, unlike the United Right Alliance which has candidates in only half of the country’s UATs or the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which only has around 1,000 localities covered, according to Libertatea information.

Party organization, the key element for votes

One of the strategies of the parties in the alliance is to avoid any scandal or any pretext of polarization that would bring people to the vote. The smaller the turnout, the more dependent it is on the network of local elected officials and party structures. PSD and PNL have their own people in the polling stations, but they also took over a good part of the seats reserved for UDMR. In particular, according to Libertatea sources, the PSD-ists received a large part of the seats that belonged to the UDMR in the polling stations in the counties where the Hungarian minority does not have a very large share.

Last but not least, the fact that PSD and PNL have a monopoly on the resources of the central and local administration allowed a policy of recruiting people dependent on the parties to be part of the polling station committees.

Laconic explanations or none at all

In the last weeks, Libertatea tried to get official answers about how the campaign will be done from the representatives of the Power, those who toured the merger. In the case of the PNL, the spokesperson, Ionuț Stroe, directed the Libertatea reporter to Rareș Bogdan, the coordinator of the European Parliament campaign of the liberals. But Rareș Bogdan did not respond for clarification.

In the case of the PSD, some laconic explanations were given by Lucian Romașcanu, spokesperson of the formation and candidate for the head of the Buzău CJ. “There are billboards with the candidates for MEPs in the peri-urban area, there are materials about MEPs distributed to the candidates for all mayorships, we talk about MEPs in public speeches, in media appearances. It’s a campaign that’s running properly. Of course, there is a greater interest in the local campaign, but the message for the European Parliament is not non-existent”, emphasized Romașcanu, referring primarily to the situation in the county where Buzău is running.

However, Libertatea was able to observe the presence everywhere in the municipality of Buzău of the team Lucian Romașcanu – Constantin Toma (head of the CJ-City Hall of Buzău) on the promotion posters, not that of the local candidate for the European Parliament, Andi Cristea. And the situation, i.e. the lack of a candidate for the European Parliament, is similar in the rest of the county, from tourist spots such as Vulcanii Noroioși to the Siriu area.

Later, when clarifications were requested for this situation, Romașcanu directed us to Mihai Tudose, campaign coordinator and head of the list for the European Parliament, who, in turn, did not respond to technical and logistical explanations regarding the test of MEPs.

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