Bucharest is not at all a capital city, it is a birthday cake. The city divided in 6 attracting pieces, actually a waste meant for electoral battles. So there are 6 districts, actually 6 estates. And they have got nothing to do with each other. If you cross this monstrous district, that is the centre of Romania, let's say from west to east, you cross some villages and in the end you reach land and then you fall into the Black Sea. There is no urbanism because there is no city. There is just a jungle made of tighly intertwined interests. The look of every quarter is different, depending on the tricks played by mayors and party interests. If your quarter is ruled by a Democrat-Liberal mayor, for instance, you are sure to ruin your sandals because of the pavement curbs planted by the general mayor Adriean Videanu. If you live in a quarter ruled by a Social-Democrat mayor, you can do anything, even a garage on the roof of the block where your flat is. And if you live in a quarter ruled by a Liberal mayor, you risk nothing. So the electors in Bucharest have got a choice to make. Candidates' offers are irresistable, for you are offered anything: lots of parking areas, concrete playgrounds, kindergartens in basements, fireworks in the afternoon, flowers and sometimes even an eclipse. As if all these wonders were not enough, you also get a general mayor as bonus. To do what? Since the city develops at random, in an uncontrolled manner, the way the mayor, the dozens of district advisers and the mayor's relative please, than why is there need of a general mayor, accompanied by lots of general councilors and hundreds of nephews, to govern such a big mess? I have seen a mayor showing how southern Bucharest can be connected to northern Bucharest and an engineer inventing a horizontal elevator to connect the Otopeni Airport in Bucharest to London. Still there seems to be no one to explain to us how to handle a catastrophe such as an earthquake. We don't need experts to prove it will come, just as we don't need clairvoyants for a soccer game between the teams in the Romanian league. Is Buchrest ready for an earthquake? I think it is. Is the mayor ready? He is. It is just that it should take place in February or even March, but not in the summer, for no one would manage to go to the Maldives, but just stay in Paris like fools. I feel envy when I notice that none of the mayors lives in the historical center of Bucharest, mostly ruins, I mean what is left of it. Bucharest is the European city with the most buildings vulnerable to a seismic risk. Still no candidate runing in the mayor elections isn't interested in proposing a project to save from disaster at least a small piece of that which all the uninformed people call Small Paris. The regional urbanism plan is left in God's hands. It is only He who will manage to establish some parking areas in the city centre and see that the lawful owners whose properties were abusively confiscated get what is theirs. And any catastrophe is sure to refresh both the electorate and the city. After the earthquake that devastated Bucharest in 1977, there emerged a new city, much higher and with much more blocks of flats. So the next earthquake can bring some social peace, good vicinity and solidarity like in the times of Ion Iliescu. It can also bring a doctor who takes no bribe to rule Bucharest and, generally, a new opportunity for cheat. Tudor, a little boy who is my friend, was drawing his opinions on the world and on life with a piece of chalk on the alleys of the Cismigiu Park last Saturday. But there came a candidate wising to become a general mayor of Bucharest. He was big, smelling of perfume and dressed up to the nines. He hugged, kissed and photopraghed by friend out of the blue. And after him there passed his procession, treading on the chalk drawings belonging to my friend. And they turned into ashes and dust.

Rene PARSAN