Romanian politicians turn to crowdfunding to raise money for the local elections

Romania’s National Liberal Party (PNL) has found an alternative solution to raise the money needed to finance the electoral campaign for this year’s local elections: crowdfunding. The party has launched a project on local platform Sprijina.ro and aims to raise a total of RON 500,000 (some EUR 110,000). The money should be collected in the next 29 days. “All the parties that want to get financing through crowdfunding can register their projects on Sprijina.ro at any time, benefiting from full transparency as the amounts and the supporters’ names appear on the website in real time,” reads a statement of Sprijina. PNL’s project is not the first political project registered on the crowdfunding campaign. The Demos Association is trying to raise RON 1 million through this platform, an amount necessary for Romania Unita Party’s electoral campaign. So far, the project attracted funding worth over RON 2,700 and will remain active for 58 more days. PNL has had some problems with finding the right candidate for the Bucharest mayor position. In April, the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) started an investigation on PNL vice president Ludovic Orban and accused him of allegedly trying to get illegal financing for his electoral campaign for Bucharest city hall. Orban decided to withdraw and PNL had to find another candidate. The party chose Marian Munteanu, a former leader of the anti-government protests that took place in 1990 in Romania to take Orban’s place. However, things didn’t get better for PNL as Munteanu’s nomination has determined a wave of criticism, as many NGOs accused him of supporting extremist views and embracing the legacy of the legionnaire movement. The party then decided to pull him from the competition and announce a new and final candidate: former justice minister Catalin Predoiu.