Romania’s president elect, Klaus Werner Johannis, won last month's elections 54% to 46% against the odds-on favorite, Victor Ponta, the incumbent prime minister – the result of a sudden, unprecedented surge of voters assaulting the ballot booths on the last leg of the 12-hour voting day, Nov. 16.

The story of Klaus Johannis bears some telling. He was born in 1959 in Sibiu, Transylvania, holds a degree in physics, and since 1990 he has been the leader of Romania’s German Democratic Front. Johannis belongs to an almost extinct German community that used to populate a major part of Transylvania. Some fled during the Communist regime, but most emigrated after the 1989 so-called “Revolution” – including Johannis’s parents and his sister. But Johannis did not. He never intended to flee Romania.

Instead, he fell in love with his future wife, Carmen, an ethnic Romanian and English teacher. Johannis declares himself as a Romanian of German origin. He stayed on in the country, he says, because he thought he could make a difference in a region neglected by the old Communists and pillaged by the new opportunists. People voted for him, since he was the ambassador of the much prized German know-how. Which is exactly the slogan he rode to victory during the presidential elections: “Romania lucrului bine facut," or Romania’s well done thing. People know a German‘s word (Ein man, ein wort) is a gentleman’s word in agreeing to keep it so: no shady deals, no negotiations for non-negotiable issues, no saying “yes” once you said “no.” And when it comes to promises, no false ones.

I live about 20 miles away from Sibiu, in the village of Alamor. Voters here had been told by the mayor, a partisan of Johannis’s opponents, that if Johannis won, he would sever the local budget and terminate the work in progress introducing city water and indoor plumbing into every household. Moreover, she added, Johannis would cut off social security funding. Almost no one believed it. They couldn’t imagine a German, a Saxon (Sas, in Romanian), not being true to his word. When I traveled to Sibiu after the election, I saw a graffiti artist had scribbled on a brick wall: “Ein Man Ein Vot.” One Man, One Vote.

That’s the nice part. But Johannis hasn’t had it always this smooth. His enemies have alleged at times a couple of wrongdoings; they call him “Klaus Six House” because he acquired six lodgings (houses and apartments) during his tenure as mayor of Sibiu. Even more terrible sounds the accusation that Johannis peddled orphans in the early 1990s to some Canadians who ended up adopting three kids from a nearby village, with his wife translating the whole deal.

Not only that, but it's said that those kids were in fact sold to foreigners to be used as organ donors. And that’s because nobody has heard from those kids again.

Okay, a bunch of insane accusations. But Johannis has always responded. A stranger accusation came just days before the final round of voting from a prime minster’s party member, someone riding the candidate for not having any other political experience than that of mayor – and even more blamable, for not having been able to have an offspring. “How could one who hasn’t conceived any child be the Father of this country?” the party member asked.

Even though he lacked charisma and well formulated diatribes, Johannis remained calm and unflappable during his two televised debates with his opponent, Victor Ponta, who seemed very sure of himself promising big change. The assuredness seemed not to have played in his favor. People over here are indeed craving changes, but this time around they proved to have meant drastic, radical change. Maybe even the ultimate change. Monarchy.

Many monarchists have voted for Johannis, and some said he reminded them of a Hohenzollern. At 93, King Michael of Romania is the only survivor of all heads of state who sat at the helms of their countries during World War II. He was forced by the Communists, with a little help from USSR, to renounce his throne in 1947. Right after the elections last month, King Michael received Klaus Johannis in a rare ceremony, his highness participating in person at the event. It seemed that they got along just fine. And could chat in German, too.

Vladimir Putin congratulated Johannis as well. They might also converse in German since Putin is more than fluent in a language he mastered in East Germany back in the days when he starred as a KGB head spy. He has proven to still master it during his talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, another fan of Klaus Johannis.

Then came the Bucharest Book Fair, where Johannis’s book, “Pas cu pas,” Step by Step, became a huge best-seller and he stayed on signing each and every copy sold there. In the book, he confesses that he takes good care of his rose garden and fixes everything that needs fixing in his household, from plumbing to electrical mishaps; and that Carmen, soon to be First Lady, is an excellent cook, his favorite dish being meatball soup. That’ll fix him up just fine. Yes, the Germans are famous as fixer-uppers in Transylvania, and Romanians are teasing them with this saying: “When a Saxon hasn’t got something to fix he takes apart his house.”

Let’s hope he does just that, taking apart corrupt Romania and putting it back in place clean and proper. In his recent declarations, Johannis vows to implement a new infrastructure and an educational system similar to the German one. He is a big success in university centers, on Facebook and among the diaspora; red tape and long voting lines made them call their relatives in Romania, urging one and all to vote for Klaus. And they did, big time.

The German name Johannis comes from Hebrew via the Greek variety, Ioannes, in original y’hohanan (later Yohanan), derived from the tetragram YHWH – the Judaic sign forbidden to be uttered, then adopted as “Yahwe” (I am the one who is) – and combined with “hanan,” similar to mercy. So “y’hohanan” means “Lord has mercy” or “Lord has favored.” So far so good, the auspices seem to redeem this meaning. And asked what he likes better, Pere Noel or Santa Klaus, Johannis grinned, and said, "Santa Klaus."

klaus-iohannis-11.jpg