Bucharesters vote, politicians adrift: no new candidate, same crisis of credibility

The local by-elections for the position of Mayor General of the Capital represent yet another proof of the incompetence of the political class, which, a year after the disastrous experiment of Călin Georgescu and over six months after the presidential elections in May 2025, did not understand that it must reform, to bring new, competent people, professionals in their field of activity to the forefront, thus leaving room for increasing dissatisfaction among citizens with the right to vote, some of whom have come to radicalize and thicken the ranks of extremist parties.

The option of radicalization or directing a significant part of the population towards extremist parties has no logical basis if we analyze the speech provided by Călin Georgescu regarding national rebirth and awakening in consciousness. Georgescu declared: "Whoever has lived among wolves cannot become a jerk”. The same Călin Georgescu said on another occasion that he had broken away from the "Matrix”. In other words, he lived among jerks, which would not normally, logically, allow him to become a full-fledged wolf.

Unfortunately, these aspects, these nuances of incoherence of the respective speech are not noticed by those who will show up at the polling stations in Bucharest, Sunday, December 7, to elect their mayor general for the next two years. We recall that the position of mayor-general of the Capital remained vacant following the election and inauguration of Nicuşor Dan in May 2025 as President of Romania, the one who last fall won his second consecutive term as mayor of Bucharest.

The offer of the political class seems rich - 17 candidates, of which two withdrew in the last week (Vlad Gheorghe - who chose to support the PNL candidate - and Eugen Teodorovici - who chose to support the PSD candidate), but one that does not bring any new people to the forefront of the scene from the mainstream parties.

On the ballot, only old people in politics are in the foreground. The first of these is Cătălin Drulă, USR candidate, a politician known for his mandate as Minister of Transport - when he ended a prolonged, illegal strike at Metrorex and abolished the privileges established by union leaders. Cătălin Drulă was the USR president who recorded the failure of that political formation in the June 2025 European parliamentary elections, which is why he was immediately removed from office by his party colleagues, who replaced him with Elena Lasconi. Subsequently, Drulă supported the Lasconi experiment for the position of USR president in the presidential elections canceled in December 2024, so that later, in March 2025, the current USR candidate for the position of general mayor of the Capital switched to Dominic Fritz's camp and left Lasconi alone in the first round of the presidential elections in May, elections that were ultimately won by Nicuşor Dan. Immediately after Nicuşor Dan was installed in Cotroceni, Cătălin Drulă announced his intention to run for mayor-general and claimed the legacy left by the former mayor, proving this through a post following the meeting he had with the new president of Romania.

The next candidate is the social democrat Daniel Băluţă, the mayor of Sector 4, who is playing his chance to export the administration model built in the sector to the capital. According to recent articles published in the media, Băluţă is at the center of a real estate scandal, in which his relatives allegedly purchased apartments from a builder who received authorization for the respective project from the social democrat mayor. Moreover, Daniel Băluţă is the one who at the beginning of this year was in open conflict with the current president Nicuşor Dan, at the time when the latter was mayor-general, regarding the works started for the rehabilitation of the floor in the Unirii area. Later, Daniel Băluţă appeared at the Cotroceni Palace much more amiable around President Nicuşor Dan, with whom he seemed to have a cordial relationship.

• Anca Alexandrescu, from social democracy to sovereignty

Another controversial candidate is Anca Alexandrescu, a journalist and independent candidate supported by AUR. She moved with weapons and luggage to the sovereignist camp last fall, after having previously been an advisor to the social democratic leaders Adrian Năstase and Liviu Dragnea and an advisor to Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă. For ten months, Anca Alexandrescu constantly promoted, in her show on Realitatea Plus television, only the leaders of the sovereignist movement, clearly positioning themselves, one after the other, on the side of Călin Georgescu and George Simion, in the presidential elections canceled last year and in the presidential elections in May 2025. The shows produced by Anca Alexandrescu represented a real pulpit from where the representatives of the sovereignists launched countless attacks on the European Union, the strategic partner France and clearly positioned themselves on the side of Russia in the conflict in Ukraine, without the current candidate for the Capital City Hall trying to bring arguments contrary to the statements of his guests on the Realitatea Plus television set.

Ciprian Ciucu, acting mayor of Sector 6 and PNL candidate, is a promoter of an organized right and the continuity of local infrastructure projects, but some of the inhabitants of the sector he shepherds are dissatisfied that the mayor has not managed equally all the territory he shepherded. Moreover, they accuse him of the fact that this year, at the Christmas Fair in Sector 6, the most important artists are performing during this week preceding the vote on December 7, for an amount of 100,000 euros, with the event set to decrease in intensity next week.

Among the controversial candidates are George Burcea - the actor supported by the Young People's Party, Ana-Maria Ciceală, the candidate of the SENS (Health, Education, Nature, Sustainability) formation, known for her activism in defending green spaces, Gheorghe Macovei, candidate of the Greater Romania Party, Oana Creţu, from the United Social Democratic Party, Mihai Ioan Lasca - Party of the Romanian People's Patriots, Rareş Lazar, from the Romania in Action Party, Dănuţ Angelo Trifu, independent, with a strong profile in the area of environmental NGOs, Gheorghe Neţoiu, independent candidate, former shareholder of the Dinamo Bucharest football club and with a suspicious role during the December 1989 Revolution and Angela Negrotă, independent with a civic-religious profile and critical of the electronic identity card. The list of candidates also includes Liviu-Gheorghe Floarea, representative of the Maniu-Mihalache National Peasant Party, and Constantin-Tiţian Filip, a doctor, an independent candidate with an outsider's speech compared to the major parties.

This mix of candidates, from incumbent mayors to civic activists, from independents with media notoriety to career politicians, transforms the partial local elections in Bucharest into a volatile competition, in which the vote of each Bucharester weighs more than it seems at first glance. In a city tired of promises and marked by years of disputes between the administration and citizens, December 7, 2025 becomes the day when the technical rules - who can vote, where they can vote, with what documents and under what conditions - meet the big political question: who will manage to transform these millions of potential votes into a legitimate mandate and, above all, into a beginning of change for Bucharest.

• Who can vote in the elections in the Capital?

On Sunday, December 7, approximately 1,800,000 eligible Bucharest residents are expected to vote at the 1,289 polling stations in the six sectors of the capital to choose who will lead the country's largest city until the local elections in 2028. Sunday's vote takes place against the backdrop of enormous pressure on local public administration and increased expectations regarding traffic, air quality, infrastructure investments and urban planning discipline, in a Bucharest that has been in a crisis of coherent vision for years.

Who can vote on December 7 is clearly defined: Romanian citizens who have reached the age of 18 by election day inclusive and who have their domicile in the municipality of Bucharest or their residence established in the Capital before June 7, 2025 have the right to vote, and the rules are identical for citizens of other European Union member states who live in Bucharest or have established their residence here prior to the same date, and they can vote in the partial local elections for the mayor of the Capital.

Excluded from the electoral list are the mentally ill and mentally ill persons placed under interdiction and persons sentenced, by final court decision, to the loss of electoral rights, as established by the Municipal Electoral Bureau.

The basic rule for exercising their vote is simple and firm: each voter votes only at the polling station to which their domicile or residence address is assigned, as the case may be.

Those who requested prior to June 7, 2025 to be registered in the Electoral Register with their residence address, at an address assigned to a different polling station than their home address, can exercise their right to vote only at the polling station assigned to their residence address, not their home address, which encourages updating the factual situation.

Voters who established their residence in Bucharest before June 7, 2025, but not have requested to be registered in the Electoral Register with this address, they can still vote at the polling station to which their residence address is assigned, even if they do not appear on the permanent electoral list: on voting day, the president of the electoral bureau of the polling station in question will register them on the supplementary electoral list, provided that they can prove their residence. On the other hand, those who have established their residence at an address assigned to a polling station other than their home address after 7 June 2025 can only vote at the polling station corresponding to their home address, which implicitly sanctions late changes of residence compared to the official electoral calendar.

In more delicate situations, where the residence was established before June 7, 2025, but the document proving it expired between this date and the election date, and the citizen renewed his document so that there is continuity of residence, the president of the polling station is obliged to contact the General Directorate for the Registration of Persons, through the Call Center, for verification; if the continuity of residence is confirmed, the voter votes at the station assigned to the address of residence, he is not sent home. The personnel involved in organizing the election, i.e. the president and deputy of the polling station, the members of the electoral bureau, the computer operators, the auxiliary technical personnel and those in charge of maintaining order, vote at the station where they perform their duties, provided that they have their domicile or residence in the electoral district of Bucharest, so that they do not have to leave their workplace during the election.

Regarding documents, the rules are precise and at the same time restrictive: in order to vote in the partial local elections for the Mayor of Bucharest, Romanian citizens must present to the electoral bureau of the polling station an identity document valid on the day of the vote, and the law accepts the identity card, electronic identity card, provisional identity card, identity card, diplomatic or electronic diplomatic passport, service passport or electronic service passport, and in the case of students from military schools, the military service card. All these documents must be valid no later than December 7th, otherwise the vote cannot be exercised.