Several thousand on Victory square in front of the government headquarters demonstrating against the proposal to ease anti-graft legislation on 2 February, 2017.NurPhoto\/ Press Association.All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
Over
\nthe weekend of 10-12 August 2018, Romanian and international media were filled
\nwith images of government violence against peaceful protesters. Roughly 120,000
\npeople filled Victory Square in Bucharest on Friday (10 August), demanding that
\nthe ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) step down following the dismissal of a
\nsenior prosecutor, Laura Codru\u0163a K\u00f6vesi, who has
\nbeen investigating corruption charges against politicians. Romanians were also
\nprotesting against the introduction of new laws aimed at subordinating the
\njudiciary to party politics. <\/p>\n
Despite
\nthe overwhelmingly peaceful nature of the protests, police and gendarmes used
\ntear gas to disperse the crowds from 4pm on Friday onwards. By 11pm, they
\nreceived orders to clear the square. They did so using tear gas, water cannons,
\npepper spray, and by beating protestors with batons. This was one of the
\nlargest and most violent repressions the country has seen since 1990. Videos and images of police
\nviolence continue to circulate on social media, and demonstrators are demanding
\nthat the government respect European norms about the right to peaceful assembly
\nand personal security. <\/p>\n
Anti-PSD
\nrallies took place throughout Bucharest from late 2016 onwards, but escalated
\nand became centred upon Victory Square during January 2017, when the
\nnewly-elected PSD government passed a series of laws pardoning certain crimes while
\namending the criminal code. The major beneficiaries of the laws were Liviu
\nDragnea, the leader of PSD, who was convicted with a suspended sentence on
\ncharges of fraud and abuse of office; and Dan Voiculescu, a media mogul and
\nbillionaire in prison for money laundering. <\/p>\n
A
\nlarge number of PSD politicians fell victim to politically-targeted
\nanti-corruption campaigns during the presidency of Traian B\u0103sescu (2004-2014),
\nand these laws were an attempt to allow party leaders to remain in politics. Despite
\nlarge-scale street protests, the prime minister passed the laws by \u201cemergency
\ndecree\u201d ignoring public debate and the opposition. Mobilizing around the hashtag
\n#rezist, by early February 2017 over 500,000 people across the country had
\ntaken to the streets in various cities to protest what they regarded as an abuse
\nof power. They were supported, ineffectually, by President Klaus Iohannis and
\nby leaders of the major opposition parties, as well as by sympathetic rallies
\nin capital cities around the world. Protests have been held regularly in
\nBucharest\u2019s Victory Square since they began, but the government has to date shown
\nno sign of backing down.<\/p>\n
The
\nstreet protests reveal significant divisions within Romanian society, between
\nthose who value the norms of liberal democracy and those who are more comfortable
\nabout \u201cbreaking the rules\u201d when they believe it is in the country\u2019s best
\ninterests. <\/p>\n
After
\na 40% voter turnout and significant attempts to mobilize voters living abroad,
\nPSD won the 2016 elections with a comfortable majority. Pervasive social
\nstereotypes assume that PSD voters are pensioners, housewives, the unemployed
\nand the poorly educated, but sociological analyses of
\nthe elections suggest that the party is now able to attract
\nthe support of large numbers of people with tertiary educations. PSD voters are
\nfrequently state employees or members of the lower middle class in contemporary
\nRomania. <\/p>\n
Voters
\nappear to have been well aware that leading politicians have been involved in
\nhigh levels of corruption. Nevertheless, they chose to vote PSD in anger over
\ncuts to pensions and state salaries introduced as austerity measures by a
\nseries of liberal governments, overseen by then-President Traian B\u0103sescu following
\nthe 2008 financial crisis. <\/p>\n
Moreover,
\nthey view imprisoned PSD politicians such as Liviu Dragnea as victims of a
\ncynical attempt by B\u0103sescu to eliminate his political rivals through corruption
\ntrials. The majority of protesters appear to be highly-educated professionals aged
\nbetween 18 and 35, with firm views about the rule of law. Whereas the
\nstereotypical PSD voter runs Windows XP and consumes partisan local media; by
\ncontrast, the stereotypical protester in Bucharest owns an iPhone and reads
\ninternational newspapers online. The fact that their party won the 2016
\nelections with a comfortable majority means that PSD voters often see the
\nprotestors as \u201cpoor losers\u201d \u2013 privileged individuals used to having their own
\nway in national elections, and who cannot accept that their preferred
\ncandidates are not in power. PSD voters often see
\nthe protestors as \u201cpoor losers\u201d \u2013 privileged individuals used to having their
\nown way in national elections, and who cannot accept that their preferred
\ncandidates are not in power.<\/p>\n
Beyond
\nthe immediate issue of the legislative changes, protesters are angry at a
\npolitical culture dominated by a corrupt plutocracy and by individuals with
\nconnections to the Communist-era secret police, the Securitate. As is typical
\nof street protests in a post-Occupy world, they have consistently failed to support
\nany leader or party, nor have they made specific demands \u2013 apart from asking
\nthat the government reinstitute anti-corruption laws before stepping down. <\/p>\n
Lack
\nof institutional support makes the longevity of these protests surprising, and
\nthe fact that they have continued unabated for twenty months is a testament to
\nthe anger that protesters feel towards the government. During this time,
\nprotesters have used social media in innovative ways, with public debates over
\nthe issues being broadcast via social media, as well as activists using
\nFacebook and Twitter to share information and coordinate activities.<\/p>\n
The
\nradical right have been largely silent in this round of protests, mostly because
\nthe major right-wing groups are inactive and lacking effective leadership. The
\nGreater Romania Party (PRM) has been disorganized since the death of its
\nleader, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, in 2015 and has expressed a desire to shed its
\nreputation as an extremist nationalist party. Oana Z\u0103voranu, a television
\npersonality with close ties to the PRM, described the protests as \u201ca battle
\nbetween light and darkness,\u201d but said that she chose \u201cnot to get involved with
\nhooligans.\u201d <\/p>\n
The
\nNew Right Party has also stayed away from the anti-corruption protests, emphasizing
\nits own anti-LGBTQ marches and trying to rebuild its reputation after one of
\nits leaders, Adrian Pal, was sentenced to five years
\nin prison for possessing large quantities of child pornography.
\nDespite its involvement in the 2013 wave of environmental protests, the
\nneo-fascist Legionary Movement has focused its energies in recent years on
\ngaining legal recognition. It too has ignored the current wave of protests. Gigi
\nBecali, the football baron and leader of the now-defunct New Generation Party,
\njoined the protests in February 2017, but has since distanced
\nhimself from the #rezist movement, accusing it of \u201canarchism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite
\nthe large numbers of workers living abroad and incidents of hooliganism incited
\nby small numbers of people, the repertoires used by the crowds on 10 August
\nwere substantially similar to those that have sustained the #rezist movement
\nfor the past twenty months. Yet this was the first time the authorities have
\nused water cannons, pepper spray, and tear gas against protesters. Preliminary
\nreports suggest that gendarmes acted on direct orders from their superiors. It
\nis still unclear why, after twenty months of protests, the government felt that
\nthis level of force was necessary. It is unlikely that they felt that state
\nsecurity was threatened by the protests, even if this was the message that
\nmedia outlets promoted in the days leading up to 10 August. Street protesters are the only thing preventing the
\ngovernment from undermining the country\u2019s liberal democracy.<\/p>\n
With
\nno significant opposition either from the president or from opposition parties,
\nstreet protesters are the only thing preventing the government from undermining
\nthe country\u2019s liberal democracy. The repression may be a sign that the
\ngovernment sees the subordination of the judiciary to be the culmination of
\ntheir political program over the past year and a half and decided to
\nmarginalize debate over the proposed legislation by shifting the focus to
\nquestions of law and order. <\/p>\n
Protests
\nhave continued in Bucharest in recent days, and have spread to other major
\nurban centres. The association of protest with the diaspora has waned, however,
\nand increasingly protesters are the same people who have sustained the movement
\nsince January 2017. <\/p>\n
Regardless Several thousand on Victory square in front of the government headquarters demonstrating against the proposal to ease anti-graft legislation on 2 February, 2017.NurPhoto\/ Press Association.All rights reserved. Over the weekend of 10-12 August 2018, Romanian and international media were filled with images of government violence against peaceful protesters. Roughly 120,000 people filled Victory Square in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nof whether the protesters manage to achieve their aims, the unprecedented
\nnumber of people involved in these protests has enshrined social movements as a
\nkey element of Romanian politics, which is something that is unlikely to
\ndisappear any time soon.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"