Emil Boc

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emil Boc (September 6, 1966, Răchiţele) was elected in June 2004 as the Mayor of Cluj-Napoca, the largest city in Transylvania, Romania. Boc is also president of the Democratic Party of Romania, part of the Justice and Truth (DA) Alliance and the party of President Traian Băsescu.

He assumed the position of mayor after the 2004 defeat of Romanian far right nationalist Gheorghe Funar, who had been mayor of Cluj-Napoca for twelve years, first as a member of the Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR) and then, after his 1997 expulsion from that party, as a member of Corneliu Vadim Tudor's strongly nationalist and far right Greater Romania Party. Cluj-Napoca, now about 80% Romanian, had a Magyar (ethnic Hungarian) majority as recently as the 1950s, so nationalism is not a trivial issue there. In the 2004 election, Funar lost out in the first round to both Boc and Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate Ion Rus; Boc went on to defeat Rus in a run-off election.

Boc's mayoralty has had at least one effect on the look of the city: Funar had festooned the city with Romanian flags, and even painted park benches in the colors of the flag. Under Boc's leadership as mayor, the municipality began repainting park benches in solid colors and reducing the proliferation of Romanian flags.

He and his wife Oana, a university lecturer whom he married in July 1994, have two daughters, Cezara and Patricia. His parents are Ioan and Ana; his siblings, Ioan, Gheorghe, Traian and Dorina, are older than he is.