From Ceausescu's orphanage, to public office – a former orphan now aspires to become mayor of commune in Southern Romania.

From being abandoned at only 2 months old, taken to a communist state-run infant centre in the summer of 1987, to a democratic mayoral candidate 37 years later, Vişinel Balan has had his share of painful memories and pride moments. 

Vişinel Balan is one of the "decrees" (decreței), children abandoned by poor families as a result of Romania's 1966 Anti-Abortion Decree aimed at boosting demographics.

“They beat us up until we couldn’t move”, is one of Balan’s first memories from the orphanage.

The orphan life

Over the 26 years spent in residential institutions in north-eastern Romania Vişinel Balan went through several orphanages and a foster family. He describes himself as having been a sickly child, suffering from bronchitis. He lived in a room with other six boys and he would often be woken up by another kid punching him in the head.

Every minute they were late for class earned the kids a whack across the palms from their tutors.

“We got beaten each time we didn’t learn the lesson.”

Life was hard at the orphanage and that made Vişinel Balan and others run away occasionally and then return after some time.

“There was a lot of violence at the orphanage and running away was a coping mechanism”, he told EU Reporter in an interview.

“One of my most traumatizing experiences was from when I was 9 years old and lived in a railway station. The girl I ran away with was found dead by the river near the railway station. She was murdered.”

The foster family he later got assigned to wasn’t that much better than the orphanage environment. “The husband beat his wife and the wife beat me. I complained to the authorities, but they asked not to cause any more problems”, Vişinel Balan told EU Reporter.

He got to meet his biological family when he was 11. He remembers that he was received with indifference, his parents barely knew of his existence.

Vişinel Balan is the youngest of 13 children. Four of them died and the rest were put in care. He only keeps in touch with his brother Virgil. Virgil helped Vişinel when he got out of the orphanage and moved to Bucharest to study law and theatre.

He later set up an NGO which helps institutionalized children in Romania. He takes part in coaching and motivational speaking events where Balan talks about his experience and life in Romanian orphanages.

Bid for public office

Vişinel Balan first entered an electoral campaign in 2016 as an independent, during the Romanian parliamentary election, but failed to win a mandate.

Later in 2020, he entered as an independent the mayoral race for the commune of Joita, a commune near Bucharest. He then came short of getting elected. His previous campaign has been an eventful one according to Balan. During his previous campaign, Vişinel Balan spoke about harassment, and intimidation to have him drop out of the race.

He is now running again for mayor of Joiţa and hopes for better results.

“I thought about running for office when I began advocating the building of a playground for kids living in Joiţa. I entered the race because I want to offer an alternative, to improve living conditions and change the way this commune has been run for the past two decades.”

Vişinel Balan has been living in Joiţa for several years, raising his toddler son.

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