Mayor who died two weeks ago just won re-election by landslide

This week, the populace of a small village has voted in a mayor who had sadly already died two weeks earlier as a result of coronavirus complications, the BBC reports.

According to the local Romanian newspaper Adevărul, the townspeople of the village of Deveselu re-elected Ion Aliman, of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), to the position of mayor.

Aliman managed to earn himself 64 percent of the vote in the small town, or approximately three thousand votes, despite the fact that he had succumbed to COVID-19 a fortnight previous to the results being announced.

Take a look at this video all about the mayor in question: 

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According to local officials, Aliman’s name had already been printed on the voting ballots, and Romanian law stipulates that it is illegal to remove a political candidate's name from the ballot so late in the election.

Aliman ran unopposed, after pledging to switch political parties and run as a Liberal Party candidate. Unfortunately, he changed his mind about crossing party lines, which left the Liberals without the time to choose someone to run for office in his place.

Commenting on the village's choice of mayor, a local reportedly told Adeăvul:

"Yes, we elected a dead man. If we hadn’t, a do-nothing politician would have won."

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According to a BBC News report on this bizarre happenstance, Aliman was a former naval officer, who died in a Bucharest hospital on September 17, and was much-liked by his constituency.

His success had been a rarity to his party in recent times, which recently lost several city council seats throughout the country to the USR-PLUS alliance and to the Liberal party.

It has been reported that a new election will be held in the coming months to choose a new mayor, but only after both parties have selected their new candidates.