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Comment by PunchTornado | Hacker News Reader

It is always a bit awkward to stop a protest once you achieved your primary goal.

You are now a lot of people in the streets, with a lot of power, the government backs off. Should you ask for more or stick to the original requests that are now satisfied?

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While the original reason that kickstarted the protest was a shady law passed through an emergency ordinance (not sure if that's an English term), the problem itself is much bigger. People are dissatisfied that the new government is trying to reduce the effectiveness of certain anti corruption institutions, which have aggressively processed corruption cases for the past couple of years. This has caused a lot of desperation among public sector workers, from low level counsel positions up to the highest parts of the government. I see this as a potential inflection point for Romania and I am curious which way it goes.

This sounds silly to me. Is it awkward to seek medical treatment after numbing the pain? Is it awkward to want the cure for the disease after treating a symptom?

To the people, achieving the primary goal is like stopping the bleeding from a gunshot wound. It's the first step in preventing something worse from happening, but it's not the last step in the fight against corruption. The bullet is still inside.

Right, there was a protest in Chennai not a month ago to lift ban on Jallikattu(a local sport) and the local Govt passes a law in a week to allow this. but the protesters refused to leave the place(beach) after all the demands were met and eventually it got ugly, a police station was set on fire and the Govt had to use force.

> Jallikattu (a local sport)

Holy shit,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_bOtexFNXo

> a Bos indicus bull is released into a crowd of people and multiple human participants attempt to grab the large hump of the bull with both arms and hang on to it while the bull attempts to escape. Participants hold the hump for as long as possible, attempting to bring the bull to a stop. In some cases, participants must ride long enough to remove flags on the bull's horns.

I love learning about new sports like that. More:

* Zurkhaneh, weird workout in Iran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTHvXX-Qicw

* Kabaddi, amazing game where you have to make the other fall :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSnP9z99I9M

Don't forget about Bo Taoshi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4OV-2uTFeg

There was a nice article about this in the Economist a week ago:

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21715686-why-indian-judge...

But there were few police men burning vehicles which they blatantly deny as being "morphed". Seems like the govt wanted to smear bad name on the protest

Primary goal was not achieved. They patched the original buggy law with another buggy law. When the second law will be invalidated, the first will take effect.

Is this really awkward in practice, or are you imagining so as an observer trying to make sense of protestors?

I think its awkward in both positions but the protesters have objectives. The "Victoria" protesters want to see the government formed in January to resign and the "Cotrocenii" protesters want for President Claus Iohannis to resign.

Yeah, but I think you left out the fact that, at its peak, there were 300k "Victoria" protesters and 3k "Cotroceni" protesters. The "Cotroceni" protests are a joke.

You seem to forget that we live in a representative democracy. When the government was formed (PSD + ALDE) in January it won by a majority and there are no reasonable facts on why the government should resign.

I want to remind you that when the "Colective" horror happened the government resigned (PSD) but when a similar incident happened in the USA the president or any government official didn't resign.

If you think that we are more advanced than the american democracy then you sir ignore certain facts.

source:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/12/04/oakland...

If one of the first laws you try to pass is to legalize bribes lower than $50k to save your party leader and his cronies, it means that you deceived your voters.

Bribing was never on the table to be decriminalized, just negligence while serving in a public office.

You can easily masquerade a bribe as negligence.

Whoops, I just found $50k on my public office. I'll just take it out of negligence.

"legalize bribes lower than $50k" If you had bothered reading OUG13/2017 you would have found out that a case regarding a lower than 50k becomes a civil case and the damaged is recovered by the state. Honestly read the ordinance and stop making propaganda for PNL/USR or whatever party you want.

Which sets 50 corrupt politicians free to deal with it in a civil court. Yeah right.

The comparison with USA does not help at all because the socio-political situation in Romania is so wildly different, in all aspects.

I agree with you that the government doesn't have to necessarily resign but the fact that they were democratically elected doesn't give them the right to do anything they want. The people have the full right to voice their disagreement with the actions of the government, and I happen to agree with the demands and sentiment of the overall protests.

Unfortunately the Romanian people have been lagging (on average) when it comes to civic involvement, education, mutual trust, mutual respect etc., which lead to the election of the current populist government. There are signs that this is changing, slowly, and that makes me hopeful.

If anything, you're proving my point.

Since PSD was voted by so many people and is in the right, why isn't there any significant counter-protest?

If PSD would've governed by sticking to their political principles, their proposed agenda and within reason, there would've never been any protests. Sure, people would be upset because they have different political views, but you would've never seen 600k people on the streets.

Democracy is not a blank cheque and your argument of "they won fair and square" does not allow them to send us back into the dark ages ESPECIALLY for their own very specific interests.

If you think there's anything wrong with my logic above, then you're probably a lost case.

> there are no reasonable facts on why the government should resign

Other than the fact that they tried to decriminalize many corruption offenses triggering the largest protests since the fall of communism. As many people are saying: thieves shouldn't be let go just because they've been caught and gave everything back.

It's a well known fact that Cotroceni protesters are mostly poor and retired old people and they went there because they received some incentives. And btw it is spelled Cotroceni not Cotrocenii and Klaus not Claus.

"Cotroceni not Cotrocenii and Klaus not Claus" I'd like to remind you that I'm not a bundle of CPU and memory working perfectly 24/7 and the same thing is true for you.

Moving on to important things. "It's a well known fact that Cotroceni protesters are mostly poor and retired old people and they went there because they received some incentives"

You seem to forget that the coalition PSD + ALDE won by a majority and that we live in a representative democracy not a direct democracy.

> You seem to forget that the coalition PSD + ALDE won by a majority

There were two order of magnitude more people protesting against PSD compared to those against the president. Also, the PSD party is notorious for using bribes during electoral campaigns, especially in the rural areas.

Also, while we're at it, how does winning the majority give any political party the right to do what the fuck they want? If you trusted me with the keys to your house to look after your dog while you're away, does that give me permission to steal your TV? Remember, you gave me those keys!

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Yes they are many. They voted and the winners tried to go far beyond the original plan for which they got voted in the first place - securing their own safety first by trying to lower the bars on the law so they can sneak under the radar.

> a government should be only focused on their campaign plan

Oh, boy!

I hope you never get in a managerial position and while you are at it read the ordinance

http://www.dreptonline.ro/legislatie/oug_13_2017_modificare_...

I am in a managerial position actually and what you quoted there is not what I said. I never said that > a government should be only focused on their campaign plan.

If you find it hard to comprehend that it's out of order to take care of this law (which is selfish to the bone and only serves their own interest) before anything else you promised in your campaign I'm afraid there's not much to discuss here.

Stop promoting that ordinance please, you are outnumbered here.

Please stop spamming this link here, Hacker News is for conversations.

Always when such protests happen in Romania, all the TV shows and the other mass-media are invaded by various people, who benefit from the money stolen by the government, and who tell a huge number of lies designed to confuse the ignorant or weak-minded. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find such a person trying to influence an Internet forum in the USA, far from home. The lies said above by "Sylphine" are some of the most common lies used by the government propagandists at each protest, during the last 26 years.

1. All such protests, began as a response to some wrong action of the government. However the shills, e.g. "Sylphine", behave as if that action did not exist and say that the protests are instigated by political opponents, foreign corporations and so on, who want to overthrow the innocent government. It is true that the political opponents, e.g. the current Romanian president, always try to use such protests to gain advantages over the target of the protests. However, this has nothing to do with the cause of the protests. No politicians in Romania have enough influence to convince a really large number of people to protest just because they say so.

2. Another frequent lie is that from the message above, which attempts to present the two positions, of those that are pro & contra the government as being two equivalent positions. That is as if one would say that there are 2 equivalent theories, one claiming that 2+2=4 and the other claiming that 2+2=7, and that the truth must be somewhere between these 2 extreme theories.

This is a lie. The counter-protest gathered not even 200 times less people, all who were obviously old and poor. They were unable to explain logically why they protest. It was obvious that someone has scared them with lies, e.g. that the opponents of the government want to decrease their pensions or salaries. Before the government introduced the changes in the penal Code that started the protests, they increased slightly the pensions and the small salaries. They hoped that this will make everybody happy so nobody will protest when they will achieve their main purpose of modifying the penal Code.

While corrupt politicians are everywhere, including in the USA, I am not aware of any other case when they would have been so shameless as to give themselves the permission to steal from the public money, by law, as they tried to do in Romania.

The text of the changes to the penal Code is public, so there is no doubt about their content. It is not possible to argue that any member of the government that voted these changes did not break his/her oath, which said that he/she will observe the Constitution and the Laws and he/she will protect the rights of the citizens (which include the right of property over the public money, which must not be stolen by those hired to administrate it).

So the 2 positions are not equivalent, one is right beyond any reasonable doubt and the other is wrong beyond any reasonable doubt.

This is reflected in the numbers, it is much easier to fool a couple thousand people (counter-protesters) than to fool many hundred thousand people (genuine protesters).

2. Old, poor, uneducated, paid to protest and delivered by P$D party bus to Cotroceni Land theme park. It's just one of the same techniques used in the election theft some years ago that won the current P$D party leader his criminal record.

Our president Claus Iohannis has started a war with the winning party PSD. He encouraged people to protest against PSD and now supporters of PSD are protesting against Iohannis. I'm ashamed by my country but hey it could be worse.

I wouldn't put it like that. He encouraged anti-corruption protests, it's just that PSD decided to support corruption. Nobody is protesting the election results.

The people continue to protest the current government because they showed themselves to be untrustworthy. They backed down right now under pressure but who says they won't give another executive order in the middle of the night when no one is looking ?

"He encouraged anti-corruption protests." This executive order was talked about with ECHR and Italy had a similar project this has nothing to do with corruption. source:

http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Speech_20170127_Raimondi_J...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-drugs-law-idUSBREA1B...

"they won't give another executive order in the middle of the night when no one is looking ?"

It has become self evident to me that we need a Donald Trump so maybe our fellow Romanians get back into reality.

EDIT: P.S. The echr source talks about the problem but discussion have taken place. Also i it find a bit alarming that the case creation rate has increased so unpredictably. I quote "Firstly, with regard to Hungary and Romania, for which the number of cases increased by 95% and 108% respectively in 2016". What does this suggest? I remaind you that 2016 was a year in which Iohannis's technocratic government ruled

Are you comparing abuse of political power and stealing public money with "selling, cultivating or possessing cannabis"? Because, if we want to relax jail sentences, corrupt politicians should not be the first ones to benefit from it.

The increase in the number of ECHR cases during a year suggests absolutely nothing about the government of that year. Almost all such cases are about trials that have a long history. Trials that have begun 10 years or more ago and that are not solved yet, are not uncommon. So whatever abuses are the subject of complaints, they might be the fault of a government of many years ago. As ECHR is reached after exhausting all other means, it is almost impossible for an ECHR case to refer to an abuse happened during the same year.

Italy. Another country previously ran by the Mafia.

The protests are not about president Klaus Iohannis, are about how the government tried to steal in the middle of the night, like thieves after they said they wouldn't pass that law. Of course the president is biased toward a side, but he didn't send people out on the streets. People were already there and some of them weren't even keen on the president.

Yeah, right... The government passes an emergency ordinance quietly during the night, aimed at saving the party's leader, and you blame the president. IOW, people shouldn't think for themselves because there are leaders elected to do just that. What I'm really ashamed of is that there are still many Romanian citizens who think that leaders are allowed to steal as long as they give a little bit in return (for those who were old enough in December '89, any similarities to "give them another hundred lei..."?).

My parents fled Romania. What is the significance of that phrase?

During Ceaușescu's final speech he offered to raise the salary of workers by 200 lei per month to placate the rebelling crowd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99escu%27s_final_speec...

Only you had nothing to buy with 200 lei aside from vinegar and bean jars or maybe save for a Dacia for which you'd have no gas because it was rationalized.

Funny that you're doing politics on the internet but fail to write your president's name correctly. The president has nothing to do with the issue discussed by the way.

The so called president deserves only a impeachment and while you are at judging other people read the ordinance.

http://www.dreptonline.ro/legislatie/oug_13_2017_modificare_...

Don't copy paste. This is the 2nd time you answer me with this link and same words. Are you at work?

> Claus Iohannis

The most ridiculous adaptation I've seen so far.

The guy's name is German and it was originally spelled "Klaus Johannis". During the presidential election, he changed his last name's spelling to "Iohannis" to make it seem more Romanian, even though the German minority in Romania has always been held in high regard (yes, positive ethnic stereotypes do exist).

I guess the next step would be "Claudiu Ionescu" :-)

Actually, his name was always Iohannis, because in the communist period (when he was born) the state would try and romanize all foreign names. I know quite a few Hungarians in my home town who were given untranslatable Hungarian names just to avoid having their name translated to Romanian. The same happened during the Austro-Hungarian rule of Transylvania (<1918) but, of course, the other way round. Back to the President, indeed he used Johannis before the election because his family has always been called like that. Since going into the election campaign he switched to the official spelling that would appear on the ballot and in all the documents that he signs.

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