About half a million Romanians on Sunday took to the street in another night of protests, with many calling on the government to quit even after it scrapped the corruption legislation that sparked the week of public outrage.
Romanian Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu stood firm saying his government, which has barely been in office a month, “has a responsibility to the people who voted for us” and would not resign.
However, Romanian Minister of Justice Florin Iordache yesterday said he would publish the details of a new bill on the criminal code later in the day.
The past six nights of noisy protests thronging cities and towns around the country have been the biggest outpouring of public anger since the toppling and summary execution of former Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.
The object of public anger is an emergency decree passed on Tuesday last week, which critics at home and abroad feared marked an alarming retreat in the battle against corruption, long the scourge of the EU’s second-poorest country.
Grindeanu’s Cabinet earlier on Sunday repealed the decree, but this failed to assuage protesters, many of them chanting “Resign! Resign!” as they waved flags, brandished signs and blew whistles and plastic horns in the national colors.
“They are corrupt. We want justice... The government will still try something [with the decree],” said Emma, 24, one of between 200,000 and 300,000 people media estimated had gathered at Victory Square in downtown Bucharest.
“They are liars and bad people,” said her friend Nicole, 25. “The government has to fall... We are going to come back here every night.”
The government decree, which had been scheduled to enter into force on Friday, was to make abuse of power a crime only punishable by jail if the sums involved exceeded 200,000 lei (US$47,500).
The Romanian government still also aims, via a separate decree to be reviewed by parliament, to free about 2,500 people from prison serving sentences of less than five years.
Grindeanu’s Social Democrats (PSD) have argued the measures were meant to bring penal law into line with the constitution and reduce overcrowding in prisons, but critics see the moves as a brazenly transparent attempt to let off the many PSD officials and lawmakers who have been ensnared in a major anti-corruption drive of recent years.
That push saw about 2,000 people convicted for abuse of power between 2014 and last year, and a serving prime minister, five ministers, 16 lawmakers and five senators go on trial.
Critics say that one beneficiary — although he himself denied this — would be Liviu Dragnea, the powerful head of the PSD who helped the party win a resounding election victory only in December last year.
Dragnea is already barred from serving in government because of a conviction for voter fraud, and he is on trial for alleged abuse of power.
He denies wrongdoing.
On Sunday, a defiant Dragnea accused unspecified shadowy forces of instigating the demonstrations.
“The organization of these protests and their scale show that this is a political gathering. Who is organizing this? Hard to say but I hope that the state institutions have this information,” he said.
“I reproach myself for not having understood that this is a much better organized plan than a simple spontaneous movement,” he told the channel Romania TV.
However, demonstrator Laura Fatu said that people simply wanted an end to corruption.
“Our money, our forests ... and future are being stolen. We have had enough,” she said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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