A Romanian mayor posthumously won the elections in his village on Monday. That happened two weeks after he died of COVID-19. His name was already on the election list and could not be removed, local authorities say. Residents of Deveselu village say he deserved the profit.
Ion Aliman won his third term as mayor on Monday with 64 percent of the vote. The Social Democrat and former naval officer would have turned 57 on that day. Aliman died earlier this month in a hospital in Bucharest.
After the victory, dozens of Deveselu residents gathered at his grave to light candles and thank him for his work as mayor.
“He was a real mayor to us,” a woman told the television channel ProTV. “He worked for the village, respected all laws. I don’t think we’ll ever have such a mayor again.”
About three thousand people live in Deveselu. New elections will be organized soon, local authorities say.
It is not the first time that a Romanian village has elected a deceased mayor. This also happened in Eastern Romania in 2008. The mayor of that village died just before the polls.
Some 120,000 coronavirus infections have been diagnosed in Romania since February. More than 4,700 corona-related deaths have also been registered, which is relatively the largest number of corona deaths in Eastern Europe.
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