Mayor of Sibiu and president of PNL (National Liberal Party), Mr. Klaus Werner Iohannis is the new president of Romania, even though at the beginning of the presidential race he was in second place, after Mr. Victor Ponta, who, for the longest time, seemed to be the favorite.
Klaus Werner Iohannis was born on June 13, 1959 in Sibiu, to a family of Transilvanian Saxons. According to his autobiography, “Step By Step”, he grew up on the old streets, close to the Historic Centre. His childhood was marked by the fact that at a time when most people had family homes, his parents moved around a lot and rented different places.
Some years later, mayor Klaus Werner Iohannis – who used to be a teacher – catches the attention of the public opinion due to his large number of houses, which he owns even today: no less than six properties. This fact has been exploited at the maximum by his political adversaries. They reproached for owning so many properties based on the fact that, as a teacher, he could not possibly have the financial capability to buy the six houses.
Another attribute that defines Mr. Klaus Werner Iohannis is his German descent. He openly recognizes that even in his early years as a pupil he had more classmates of Germanic origin than Romanians. His campaign manager used this fact to promote him as a president that would bring German seriousness to the Presidential role.
He entered the political stage immediately after the 1989 Revolution, when he enrolled in the German Democratic Party. Twelve years later, he is the president of the party he had chosen in 1990. Two years before that happened, in 2000, the party proposes him as a candidate for the Mayor of Sibiu. Even though no poll ever indicated this, he was elected as Mayor and since then he has been the number one choice of the people of Sibiu in every election that followed. During his second term as mayor, in 2007, the city of Sibiu was proclaimed a European Cultural Capital, an event that attracted over a million tourists.
In November 2014 he won the second round of presidential elections, despite the fact that most people were convinced that Victor Ponta, his adversary in the running, will be the next president of Romania. Klaus Werner Iohannis turned out to be one of the most beloved candidates for presidency by the people. He won the election thanks to enormous presence of young people at the voting booths, as well as to the votes of Romanians living in foreign nations. The voting process that should have been as smooth as possible in other countries turned out to be a scandal and Romanians who wanted to vote in foreign countries had to wait in infinitely long lines for as much as 9 hours in order to get to the ballots. Klaus Werner Iohannis wants to change that, as well as the entire government in Romania.