MIRCEA MARIAN: "The general mayor, an independent, a liberal prefect, a council divided between PDL, PSD and PNL: the city will be destroyed by the gang fight".
I don't like to play the part of Cassandra, but the inhabitants of this city are in front of four hard years. More difficult than the previous ones. The elections, like it's shown by the polls, will just divide Bucharest between different groups of interests that, until 2012, will be at constant war.
General mayor will be, after all probabilities, an independent, backed just by the pterodactyls around Ion Iliescu. PSD will not officially assume Oprescu because it will wait him to break his neck, and in 2012 they will need a scapegoat. The General Council will be divided between PDL, PSD and PNL, no party will be able to achieve the majority. At the sectors we will have mayors of different colours - PSD, PDL, PNL and, probably, at four, from the Conservative Party - and in the councils, a goulash formed by all kinds of political parties, including PNG and PRM. On top of this Tower of Babel it is a liberal government preoccupied only by pensioners votes and the minister of transports - who is managing the subway and the road belt - frustrated that it has lost Bucharest. All these neighborhood gangs will either slaughter each other, or they will co-operate, but only when they will have a financial interest. The best example of inter-parties associations the session of the General Council in which were voted, with unanimity, around 70 urbanism plans, one more dubiuos than another.
Meanwhile, the cumulated problems from 2004 to 2008 will amplify. Today's traffic will become a sweet memory. Imagine the madness from the moment when the new malls on the Timisoara boulevard, Splaiul Independenţei or from Berceni will be opened. Drumul Taberei will be blocked when the works at the Razoare passage will begin. The subway, held hostage by a government that has no interest in helping the general mayor, will be over solicited. Electric power supply will become a problem as the distribution network will be over fulfilled by the growing consume. Rich or poor, we will all live like the inhabitants of Zabrauti: entire hours, especially at evening, without electric power. The statesmen who are benefiting from escort will be blocked in traffic jams, near some old Dacia.
It's almost indifferent if the city will end up in the hand of the fanciful doctor Oprescu or if we will have as mayor the more too serious mister Blaga. The only perspective, on the long run, would be that all those involved in the management of the Capital to accept a truce and to negotiate a minimum package of measures - for example, the rapid development of the subway, the construction of the second belt ring and the redefinition of the reports between the General City Hall and the sectors. Such an agreement has minimum chances. Until it is over, at the end of September 2009, with the presidential elections, on the political stage will not be a moment of peace. And from 2010... does somebody believe, honestly!, that the politicians from Bucharest could follow the old motto of the Democratic Convention: "We can't succeed if we're not together"?