The world going to crap - Romania

[Levin]

I saw a picture on twitter of protesters out on the streets of Bucharest. I've checked with a friend but she lives here and her understanding comes from her mum.

As I understand there is a new government who have changed a lot of laws and pardoned a lot of party members who have been convicted on corruption charges over the past couple of years.

DOes anyone have any other (english language) info?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The world going to crap - Romania

I'm sure ad hoc, who's travelling at present, will have plenty, but in the meantime here's something which former OTFer Purves Grundy linked to on his FB page:

http://www.bucharestlife.net/2017/02/crime-republic/

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The world going to crap - Romania

As is this, which shows that the EU is very concerned about it:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-17-195_en.htm

[Antepli Ejderha]

The world going to crap - Romania

Romanians clash with police in protests over decriminalisation of corruption

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/02/romanians-clash-with-police-in-biggest-protests-since-fall-of-communism?

I saw this, not sure if it's too different.

[Levin]

The world going to crap - Romania

Cheers guys, those are exactly the sort of thing I was after. It's heartening to see so man people on the streets but this government was elected only a couple of months ago so there must be some support for them. Or maybe people feel they've been deceived.

[ursus arctos]

The world going to crap - Romania

The opposition expected this kind of shenanigans when the current ruling party won the recent elections.

As has been the case in many other Central European countries, the ruling party is not at all popular with city dwellers with experience of life outside the country.

[ursus arctos]

The world going to crap - Romania

In a rare bit of good news, the Romanian government has reversed itself in response to days of massive street protests.

[ad hoc]

The world going to crap - Romania

It's a step in the right direction but for now it's just that. The wording of the statement last night leaves a lot of wiggle room and ambiguity. The crowds last night were pleasingly larger than before even after the announcement. We'll believe it when we see it. Was on a family holiday last week which was good but also felt like I was missing out a bit on the protests.

[ad hoc]

The world going to crap - Romania

Actually Romania is leading the way in effective protests these days. This is about the 4th time in the last 5 years that people have come out on the street and effected change.

[ad hoc]

The world going to crap - Romania

Levin wrote: Cheers guys, those are exactly the sort of thing I was after. It's heartening to see so man people on the streets but this government was elected only a couple of months ago so there must be some support for them. Or maybe people feel they've been deceived.

Broadly speaking the PSD (who were born out of the ruins of the Communist Party in 1989 - though how ruined those ruins were is debatable) have huge power in the rural areas and small towns (and Romania is a very rural country). They still broadly have all the party apparatus that existed before the revolution (minus the securitate). The young urban middle class loathe them as - interestingly - do most of the diaspora who mostly come from the same rural communities that still supports them.

They won (clearly) the last election on a low turnout (village mayors always get the vote out, people in cities disappointed with the opposition are less reliable). But this blatant attempt to whitewash all their crimes of corruption was too much. The anti corruption agency has in recent years done a superb job in rooting out and prosecuting corruption from the top down and the PSD really really want to stop them.

Other points to note: the foreign press routinely calls the PSD leftist or centre left. They are about as left wing as UKIP. Also you may encounter dodgy articles written by people from "The Henry Jackson Society" which is a London based right wing think tank which really wants to prop up this government. In recent weeks I have seen one in the Guardian and one in the FT. The argument seems to be, corruption is what Romania needs really.

[Lang Spoon]

The world going to crap - Romania

ad hoc wrote:

Cheers guys, those are exactly the sort of thing I was after. It's heartening to see so man people on the streets but this government was elected only a couple of months ago so there must be some support for them. Or maybe people feel they've been deceived.

Broadly speaking the PSD (who were born out of the ruins of the Communist Party in 1989 - though how ruined those ruins were is debatable) have huge power in the rural areas and small towns (and Romania is a very rural country). They still broadly have all the party apparatus that existed before the revolution (minus the securitate). The young urban middle class loathe them as - interestingly - do most of the diaspora who mostly come from the same rural communities that still supports them.

They won (clearly) the last election on a low turnout (village mayors always get the vote out, people in cities disappointed with the opposition are less reliable). But this blatant attempt to whitewash all their crimes of corruption was too much. The anti corruption agency has in recent years done a superb job in rooting out and prosecuting corruption from the top down and the PSD really really want to stop them.

Other points to note: the foreign press routinely calls the PSD leftist or centre left. They are about as left wing as UKIP. Also you may encounter dodgy articles written by people from "The Henry Jackson Society" which is a London based right wing think tank which really wants to prop up this government. In recent weeks I have seen one in the Guardian and one in the FT. The argument seems to be, corruption is what Romania needs really.

Ah, the Good old Henry Jackson vile neo-con lot. Bad enough they have Gove and the eternally useless Jim Murphy on their books, I'm guessing they have a benefactor who's made lots of bribes to gain "investment opportunities" in Romania.

[ad hoc]

The world going to crap - Romania

By the way, I think it's worth noting that when this all happened, with the order making this massive change in the law undemocratically issued in the middle of the night, not only did the EU and various countries in Europe condemn it and make it very clear that they saw this a huge problem, but the US State Department did too. I mean that wouldn;t have been a surprise at any other time, but it sort of feels from all the news that the US has sort of ceased to function in any meaningful way, so it's somehow vaguely reassuring to note that there are clearly still people in the State Department at least who are doing their job.

[Levin]

The world going to crap - Romania

Is there any likelihood that this pattern isn't going to keep repeating?

[ad hoc]

The world going to crap - Romania

It won't be like this. This is a pretty extraordinary situation with a lot of court cases pending especially the one on Dragnea the leader of the PSD. If the government back down what happens next is more of a low grade undermining of the anti corruption process

[ad hoc]

The world going to crap - Romania

Biggest protest so far this evening. 250,000 in Bucharest alone. At 9pm everybody lit up their phones as torches. Staggering images.

[Levin]

Romania

I had a thread on, oh, not oldOTF, middleOTF? Anyway, wsc but I can't find it here so I'm starting again. I'm not sure that there is really enough interest for just a single country thread but lumping eastern europe into one seems a bit off.

Romania.

PM Grindeanu has just lost a no-confidence motion 241 votes to seven. But I'm not too clear what is going on here is it just about removing him as PM? Given the size of the ncm his own party must have backed it so it can't just be about the corruption laws can it?

[ursus arctos]

Here's the earlier thread

I think that the situation in Romania is unique enough that it deserves its own thread, and look forward to ad hoc's report given his being on the ground.

My own friends in Bucharest tell me that corruption is the primary focus, but that the protests have evolved to call for greater political accountability in all respects.

[ad hoc]

Am on holiday at the moment (see Ireland thread) but the basic thing here is that Grindeanu who was installed as Dragnea's puppet realised that he couldn't possibly push through the corruption amnesty law without igniting some form of low grade civil war so he gave up on it, thus enraging Dragnea to the point where we have the ludicrous situation of the ruling party voting to bring down their own government. Grindeanu now says that whoever ends up as PM cannot possibly do the job since they basically have to do Dragnea's bidding and the country won't go for that

[Snake Plissken]

Here's the earlier thread

I've merged this with the old thread.

[ursus arctos]

Grand, thank you.

[Levin]

Cheers Snake and ad hoc.

So Dragnea can't be PM but it's fine that he's still the leader of his party and president of the chamber of deputies?

[ad hoc]

At one time a couple of years ago, Dragnea's predecessor as head of the PSD resigned as head of the party due to an ongoing corruption investigation (stating that the investigation was damaging the party) but stayed on as prime minister (because apparently the image of the country was significantly less important than the image of the PSD)

[ad hoc]

The latest puppet prime minister, Viorica Dăncilă, has gained a reputation for being utterly clueless. She's the butt of numerous jokes, doesn't even speak Romanian correctly, and constantly fucks up. This is fine when she's just a joke figure in the country, but when she travels... She made some gaffe in Estonia recently (I forget what), but today while visiting Montenegro in her press conference managed to say that she was very happy to be in Pristina as opposed to Podgorica. This hasn't gone down well and the Montenegrin pm has said he'll come and join the ongoing protests in Bucharest against the government.

[ad hoc]

To distract us from our problems, there will be a referendum next month in Romania intended to make clear in the constitution that marriage is between a man and a woman. This has come about through the actions of something called the "Coalition for the Family" (which is basically a front for the Romanian Orthodox Church and other assorted bigots and shysters, who got a petition together and managed to get 500,000 signatures for it (the Coalition is also seriously into trashing women's rights. there is literally no saving grace to these people). The "traditional family" that they go on about is so successful in Romania that there are still even to this day 60,000 children in care homes, many of whom are there because their parents cannot take care of them, and a married woman is physically abused by her husband every 30 seconds on average. It should be noted that gay marriage is not legal in Romania, this is not to make it illegal, it is to put it in the constitution that it never can be made legal. As far as I can tell the proposed change would make single parent families "unconstitutional" too, since they demand that a family is defined as consisting of a man and a woman.

Anyway, we're still embroiled in fighting to keep corruption illegal, but now we have this useless and worthless distraction which seeks to outlaw happiness. The opposition request is to boycott the referendum so as to make it fail through not being quorate.

[Flynnie]

The latest puppet prime minister, Viorica Dăncilă, has gained a reputation for being utterly clueless. She's the butt of numerous jokes, doesn't even speak Romanian correctly, and constantly fucks up. This is fine when she's just a joke figure in the country, but when she travels... She made some gaffe in Estonia recently (I forget what), but today while visiting Montenegro in her press conference managed to say that she was very happy to be in Pristina as opposed to Podgorica. This hasn't gone down well and the Montenegrin pm has said he'll come and join the ongoing protests in Bucharest against the government.

How does a Romanian from, I presume, a Romanian-speaking part of the country mangle her own language? I had a little Google and it sounds like this goes beyond George Bushian malapropisms to not being able to say fairly simple words correctly.