When the attack sells better than the promise. Why the candidates for the Capital City Hall rely on negative messages

Even before the official start of the campaign for the Capital City Hall, the tone was set by attacks and negative messages – either directed at the opponents or at the leaders at the top of the state. It is not a surprise: Bucharest has always been the scene of tough confrontations, where the candidates built their image in opposition to various “enemies”. Why do they choose negative strategies? “Because it works in the short term”, experts explain, showing that the short duration of the campaign also contributes to the emphasis of this type of speech.

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“Each tries to find, either a cause, an opponent or a theme of struggle,” the electoral campaign being, as a rule, marked by finding an enemy against whom the candidate is fighting for the Capital, explains the editor-in-chief of Historia, Ion M. Ioniță for “Adevărul”: “They're trying to find a campaign slogan, so to speak. That's what they're looking for, because they don't really have a campaign slogan. They're trying to identify with a theme that might get them votes.”

Disadvantages of the short campaign

There is another reason behind the candidates' strategy: “negative campaigning will work, because it works in the short term”indicates communication expert Radu Delicote, linking the electoral strategy of the candidates to the halving of the electoral campaign in the partial elections.

“A negative campaign is much more intense and much more dynamic and much more, I would say, even emotional than a positive one. In order to be able to do a positive campaign, you need much more time to be able to settle certain messages. The negative campaign, especially how social media is built and how the style of information distribution is built, now including in the mass media, works much better.

So once again, because it's a short campaign, you need negative campaign especially more than positive campaign, so that you can become relevant. And two in hand, you always need a classic marketing tactic, generally commercial and especially emotional-political, to define an enemy with whom you will fight. It also happened in the fairy tales I read as a child, when the main character had to have a victorious initiatory journey, after defeating an enemy and returning home victorious.” explains Radu Delicote.

The disadvantage for Bucharest residents

This type of campaign, intended to bring votes, also indicates a lack of plans for Bucharest. “There will be little talk and, unfortunately, in Bucharest, there will be talk about the political struggle. Not about the Bucharest project. (…) They do not have a strong theme, which will remain in people's minds, so as to bring them to vote. Bucharest remains in the background in this struggle and does not receive a strong project profiled on each candidate”also indicates Ion M. Ioniță.

Who are the “enemies” of the main candidates for the Capital

In a video published even before the start of the electoral campaign, distributed by Realitatea TV, Anca Alexandrescu went “to the streets, to fight the problems of Bucharest generated by the real estate mafia”, at which point she launched accusations including against her liberal opponent Ciprian Ciucu, but also against the PNL leadership of the Government.

In fact, Anca Alexandrescu, supported by AUR, positioned herself as an anti-system candidate, launching several attacks on her opponents and their parties, as well as on the current leaders of the state, including President Nicușor Dan.

The PSD candidate, Daniel Băluță, went both to sector 6, led by his PNL opponent, Ciprian Ciucu, and to sector 1, where the mayor is also a liberal and where he promised the people that he would return soon, regardless of the outcome of the elections on December 7: “I will do everything in my power to make their living decent and dignified. We owe it to them,” promises the mayor, stating that “not even in the last commune is there anything like that”.

“The inequity to which the people of Bucharest are subjected must stop”, emphasizes the mayor of sector 4 in another video published on social networks, proposing in his plan of measures for the Capital a social package “Bucharest – the city that leaves no one behind”.

“Real Estate Mafia” it is also present among the campaign themes of USR candidate Cătălin Drula, who unveiled a residential project right next to the Bellu Cemetery, in sector 4, led by his opponent PSD. In another video published as part of the campaign, Drula talks about another real estate project in sector 6, led by Ciprian Ciucu, whom he accuses of having given authorization for the fifth phase of the project in 2022, with the PSD-PNL vote, through derogations from the rules of the urban plan for this area.

Ciprian Ciucu directed his attention to the counter-candidate placed in the first place in the polls, Daniel Băluță, criticizing the presentation of a new street in the Capital by the mayor of sector 4, which he compares with a boulevard he laid out in sector 6.

Unlike his colleagues, Ciprian Ciucu adopts a different position. He says that he is the target of a campaign organized by the communication team of AUR, but this time hired by PSD. “I did not prepare any lies or manipulations. Now I have to defend myself from such lies. Maybe I'm naive as I believe that elections can be won with campaigns about my vision and program”he says.

The only theme of the candidate that does not fit into the usual patterns is the one regarding the investigation of the General Prosecutor's Office which concludes that almost 300 Russian oligarchs and criminals allegedly obtained Romanian identity documents illegally, in which he contradicts the Public Ministry regarding the allocation of the “initiative” in the investigation.

“I understand from a press release issued with electoral urgency by the Public Ministry that the investigations carried out by the S6 City Hall on the same subject did not help. Or not yet. I am putting here the approach taken by my colleagues in the matter regarding the Sector 6 Population Record. And I apologize if I confused something, I thought it was the turn of the file concerning Sector 6. I assure everyone that it is not my intention to take the “glory” prosecutors or to speculate politically something”the candidate said.

Who did the former mayors of the Capital fight with?

Finding an enemy in the electoral battle is not a novelty, analysts say. The same has happened so far, “when we talked about Traian Băsescu, how he fought with the moguls, with corruption, in Bucharest. Of course, when he was mayor, he fought with the PSD Council which blocked all his initiatives. Nicușor Dan with the real estate sharks”, says the editor-in-chief of Historia Ion M. Ioniță.

“Firea defined her enemy every week. When there was a television station, when there was a deputy mayor or a councilor who was against what she wanted. When there was a public figure who did not want the good of the people of Bucharest in general. Firea chose many battlefields. Tactically, from this point of view, it was seen that it was a mistake in the end”explains communication expert Radu Delicote.

And previously, in the 2008 elections, an anti-party positioning was marked. Former mayor Sorin Oprescu then ran as an independent candidate, renouncing the label of social democrat. Nevertheless, the party supported him in the second round. “Citizens' vote installs the first independent mayor at the Capital City Hall. The first independent mayor in the recent history of our capital”, said Sorin Oprescu then.