Liberal candidate for Bucharest City Hall threatens to boycott electoral debates

The campaign for the Bucharest City Hall is shaping already. The Liberal candidate Ludovic Orban on Sunday asked the Social Democrat Party chairman Liviu Dragnea and candidate for the Capital City Hall Gabriela Firea to publicly apologise for the presidential campaign or he threatened to boycott the upcoming local elections.

“I am asking PSD chairman Liviu Dragnea and PSD candidate to publicly apologise to the Romanians. I warn them I am not going to tolerate their usual dirty campaign. I am not having any, I am not to be had! I will answer any lie, any calumny, any denigration attempt,” Orban told a press conference.

He even says he considers “the extreme action” to not take part in any debate with Gabriela Firea if PSD doesn’t apologise. “I am waiting for an official position from PSD, from the PSD chairman who used to be the head of the presidential campaign, while the Social Democrat candidate was the presidential campaign’s spokesperson. They are not any minor persons in the Social Democrat Party,” the Liberal candidate pointed out.

He argued that during the 2014 presidential electoral campaign, the PSD members “threw alive and dead hens in the PNL HQs courtyard”, threw dirt at Klaus Iohannis accusing him of child trafficking, saying that he is not suitable for the President office for he has no children (statement made by Gabriela Firea) or that he would cut pensions.

In retort, the Social Democrat candidate for Bucharest City Hall, Gabriela Firea states that Orban’s boycott threat is just “a pretext” for avoiding the electoral face-off.

“It’s just a pretext so that Bucharesters could not assess him in a debate against me. Since he is a candidate, Mr. Orban has only been making politicizing statements and he had done few in informing the Bucharesters about his intentions on a better life for them,” Firea told a press release.

She also said that Orban has been “the right hand” of former Democrat Liberal mayor Adriean Videanu and that he “has joined the same logics of lack of projects.”