Cătălin Cherecheș — “building the wall” before Donald Trump

Cătălin Cherecheș: the Romanian politician who was re-elected from behind bars.

One of the major topics of debate in the Romanian public sphere for the past year has been the restrictive nature of the country’s anticorruption legislation for politicians. According to the law, people convicted on criminal charges, even with suspended sentences, are barred from holding political office. While in many other countries this might not be a major problem as, one would assume, citizens would not elect somebody under investigation for or even convicted of corruption charges, in Romania this is a hotly debated issue. For instance, Liviu Dragnea, the current leader of Romania’s ruling Social Democratic Party cannot serve as prime minister as he is barred from office following a conviction for electoral fraud.

There are however some politicians who are more fortunate and whose constituencies are more forgiving. Case in point, Cătălin Cherecheș, the re-elected mayor of Baia Mare, a northern Romanian city. Mr. Cherecheș has recently become quite famous when he had to swear in as mayor, after being re-elected from jail where he had been detained for 30 days after allegedly being caught in a sting operation while receiving a bribe of 30000 lei (6600 euros). Detention seems to have had little impact on Mr. Cherecheș’s pull at the polls, with the current mayor securing a whopping 70% of the votes at the 2016 local elections. Cherecheș seemed quite confident with his odds as he is reported to have sent a text message to trusted members of his staff urging them to continue campaigning on his behalf while National Anticorruption Directorate magistrates were writing up his arrest report.

Of course this was neither Mr. Cherecheș’s first time in office nor his first time in the limelight. Cătălin Cherecheș has been a constant presence on the political scene of the northern Romanian county of Maramureș. Although he has been a party member of no less than four parties since 2005 switching allegiance while in office several times, and served on the local Baia Mare council on behalf of the PSD, his first real position came in 2008 when he was elected as an MP. Shortly before his run for office, he received a cash donation of 1.5 million euros from his mother, a medical professional with no business ties or other avenues of income. No sooner was Cherecheș elected to office than he switched allegiances: he opted for independent status in Parliament. It didn’t last long, as in 2011 he joined the National Liberal Party (PNL) and soon thereafter he started his affair with local level governance.

The 2011 by-election — prompted by the criminal conviction of then-Baia Mare mayor Cristian Anghel — was won by Cherecheș on a USL ticket (the Social Liberal Union being, at the time, an alliance of Cherecheș’s two former parties, the PSD and PNL). He was re-elected one year later in the regular mayoral elections on the same ticket. It was in this electoral cycle that he became internationally well known for what was his greatest achievement to date: ghettoising a few dozen Roma families by quite literally building a wall around the two buildings where the Roma had been given social flats. The wall was a giant bone of contention since the beginning but mayor Cherecheș justified it as “necessary for the safety of children”. When several NGOs contested and tried to block the wall-building project, the mayor soldiered on, assuring the public that he does not have a racist bone in his body, and is actually building the wall for the Roma children. The National Council for Combatting Discrimination disagreed with this assessment and fined Cherecheș 6000 lei (1300 euros). When the local council started to discuss taking the wall down, due to the bad publicity the city of Baia Mare was getting, the mayor brought in art students from the local college to paint the wall with various maritime scenes in a cartoonish style. This served more than an aesthetic purpose, as the mayor now could enter the wall into the registry as a local monument, thus ensuring that it cannot be taken down by the organisations accusing him of racism.

Mayor Cherecheș’s political career is far from over but, then again, so are his legal troubles. There are several open cases against him including a case revolving around the source of the 1.5 million euros in cash used for his first senatorial campaign, a large part of which are reported to be spoils from an illegal land deal in Baia Mare. And like many other Romanian politicians, Cherecheș could not resist the lure of building a small media empire of his own. One of the major cases the National Anticorruption Directorate is preparing against Cherecheș focuses on his dubious acquisition of a local media trust through trusted third parties. The 30000 lei bribe that had the mayor saying his oath of office from a jail cell seems like loose change in comparison.

Romania Corruption Watch

Romania Corruption Watch

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