Over the last 2 years Romania had 3 different elections. The European Parliament election, the presidential election, and local elections for mayors and city councils.
In all three of them the citizens showed up to vote mostly against the runners of the Social Democratic Party - the ruling party in '17-'20 - rather than betting on some new faces. Tired of lies, blatant acts of corruption and incompetency, the Romanians used these elections to defeat, ridicule and get rid of the PSD candidates and to weaken an entire party also known as 'the red plague'.
So in the weeks prior to these elections, I illustrated some political posters to encourage people to vote. All three of them mocked the PSD candidates and all three candidates lost the elections.
In May 2019 Liviu Dragnea was the leader of Social Democratic Party. Accused of numerous frauds, acts of corruption and promoting incompetent people in high positions, he was counting on a low number of voters for the European Parliament election, in which case PSD would have won. But people showed up and his party took the third place in an overwhelming defeat. And a day later, he was sentenced to 3,5 years in prison in a case of fraud opened 2 years before.
Viorica Dancila was the Romanian prime-minister when she entered the race for the presidential seat. Chosen by the party to be more of a puppet than a leader, not being able to speak correctly or to conduct an argument, she offered numerous moments of embarrassment and was subject of hundreds of jokes. One of the best was the hourglass joke: "she doesn't know how to flip an hourglass, so she buys more to measure time."
Gabriela Firea entered the local election as the running mayor of Bucharest. Elected in 2016, she used the position to give huge public contracts to ghost companies, placed relatives in high positions, organized expensive fairs and festivals while the city faced more and more infrastructure problems.
One thing she did was to change nearly all curbstones in Bucharest, and add even more, resulting some ridiculous curbstone-stairs that made zero sense but added some large funds in some of her friends companies. She was also very vicious against anyone who dared to confront her or asked for clarifications, saying one time that 'if they don't like living in Bucharest, they should move out of Bucharest'.
But they didn't. Instead they voted her out.
In December 2020 the legislative election was the final step in changing the governing power and getting rid of the shady characters. The Social Democratic Party still took the first place - with less votes than in 2016 - but the runner-up parties formed an alliance to gain majority in the parliament. So far it looks alright, we'll see how it goes.
Thanks for watching!
And remember to vote,
whenever there's something to oppose.
