8098: The Obama Of Piran.

From Politics Daily…

First Black Mayor Elected in Eastern Europe

By Lauren Frayer

An African-born doctor known as the “Obama of Piran”—after the small coastal town in southwest Slovenia where he lives—has been elected as Eastern Europe’s first black mayor.

Originally from Ghana, Peter Bossman came to Slovenia in the 1970s, when it was still part of Yugoslavia, to study medicine. Running for mayor under the ruling, center-left Social Democrats, Bossman said that his race was never an issue and that he never faced discrimination because he’s from Africa.

That his new countrymen didn’t focus on his race shows the “high level of democracy in Slovenia,” Bossman, 54, told the BBC.

“There are always small groups of people not accepting people who are different, and in the first months after coming to Slovenia, I felt that some people did not want to be with us,” Bossman told Reuters.

“But for the last 10 or 15 years, I experienced nothing like that anymore. I have no problems at all, and I think people no longer see the color of my skin when they look at me,” he said.

Bossman beat narrowly beat the mayor of Piran, Dr. Tomaz Gantar, in a runoff election Sunday. After the vote, he told The Associated Press he was “happy and proud.”

“I based my campaign on a dialogue, and I think the dialogue has won,” Bossman said.

He’s pledged to bring electric cars, an airport and a golf course to Piran.

About 12 percent of Slovenia’s 2 million citizens were born abroad, but a very small number are from Africa. Nestled between Italy, Austria and Croatia, Slovenia declared independence in 1991 and is now part of the European Union and NATO.

Bossman said he initially planned to return to Ghana after earning his medical degree in Slovenia, but decided to stay after he married a fellow student of Croatian origin.

“I fell in love with this country. Slovenia is my home,” he told Reuters. “Even my first impression of the country was good, it was so clean and green.”