VIDEO Marian Vanghelie is running for District 5: “The real leaders did not succeed until they were in prison”

Marian Vanghelie submitted her candidacy as an independent to the mayor’s office of Sector 5, informs Agerpres. When submitting his candidacy, Vanghelie claimed that the legal problems of the last decade had strengthened him. “The real leaders who made history didn’t make it until they went to jail,” said the former Ward 5 mayor.

“Problems made me stronger”

“The real leaders in the world who made history and who succeeded in founding strong states did not succeed until after they went to prison, had problems or various things happened to them (…) I tell you: all the problems that I went through them in these 10 years, they did nothing but strengthen me”, Vanghelie also said (statement from minute 5.40)

He claimed that one of the main reasons why he allowed himself to be convinced to run for the post he held between 2000-2016 is the request made by several school directors in the sector who complained to him about the education situation.

“What I promise and what I want to do, starting with education, which must be the number 1 point, not only for the City Hall of Sector 5, but for all of Romania, let’s bring education to the highest standards in world. We will be an example for other countries in Europe and for everything we want to do for our children. This is why I applied. I sat and thought a lot: to submit it, not to submit it, how it is interpreted, what can be said”, said Vanghelie.

Popescu Piedone, criticized by his predecessor

Although he did not explicitly mention his name, Marian Vanghelie criticized the current mayor of the sector, Cristian Popescu Piedone, who is now running for the position of general mayor of the Capital, accusing him of leaving behind a destroyed neighborhood.

“We are happy to put some grassy corners and some curbs and the rest nothing happened. We film ourselves with TikTok and swear at our directors in the town hall as if they were slaves on the plantation. Such a thing did not exist in the City Hall of Sector 5. (…) And to move from Sector 4 to Sector 5, from Sector 5 to the Capital and if he does not go to the Capital, I am sure that in four years he will run for the Sector 2. This is a way of not assuming what you have done and what you are,” Vanghelie also said.

He cited as additional arguments for his candidacy the achievements he had in the previous mandates. “I did, I think Sebastian Park was made by me. It was a field and a square with dirt… Today they are trying to restore something, if you can believe it, with a company from Turkey that the Romanians don’t make parks anymore, in a quick formula during the campaign”, Marian Vanghelie also claimed .

At the same time, he promised that he would complete the thermal rehabilitation of 600 blocks in Sector 5 in a possible new mandate. “We made 600 blocks out of 1,200 blocks of thermal insulation, in eight years 40 blocks were made. I promise the people that in two years I will finish the difference of another 600 blocks. And I tell you with arguments. We had 120 construction sites, when we put scaffolding on 500 streets and 600 blocks in a year and a half. So, out of 700 streets, we made 650 water, canal and asphalt streets. They couldn’t finish in the 50 streets and we’ve been talking for eight years,” said Vanghelie.

The second attempt to return to the mayor’s office

In the local elections of September 27, 2020, Marian Vanghelie – the mayor of Sector 5 between 2000 and 2016 – unsuccessfully ran for a new mandate. Later, in the parliamentary elections of that year, Vanghelie was put on the first position of the list for the Chamber of Deputies of the Ecologist Party in Călărași county. But PER did not pass the electoral threshold, and Vanghelie did not obtain the mandate.

In May 2021, Marian Vanghelie was sentenced in the first instance to 11 years and 8 months in prison for abuse of office and bribery, in a trial that began in 2015. The DNA accused him that the mayor had collected undue benefits of 30.4 million euros. Vanghelie appealed, and the case is heard at the Bucharest Court of Appeal.