Protests across Romania

On Friday, January 14th, the people of Bucharest took to the streets in protest, following a tense political week. Several days earlier, the President of Romania, Traian Basescu, has proposed a new and controversial Healthcare Reform Law. The problems with this project were numerous. Firstly, the Constitution of Romania does not provide the Presidency with the right of legislative initiative, and the fact that the Ministry of Healthcare has obediently accepted this presidential project as its own served only to highlight that the separation of powers in our state was endangered. Secondly, several provisions in the text made it apparent that the current government wished to transform parts of the healthcare system into sinecures for their cronies. In doing so, they have antagonised one of the most respected professionals in the Emergency Healthcare system, Dr. Raed Arafat, who had almost single-handedly created an integrated early response system, designed to arrive quickly at accident sites, provide emergency medical care to victims and transport them to the nearest hospital. This integrated system, the SMURD, has in the mean time become synonymous with efficiency and professionalism, and President Basescu’s perceived attack on it – as well as his inelegant treatment of Dr. Arafat himself – has caused much anger among the population.  

This was the last drop in a cup of discontentment that had been filled over the past few years as the government grew increasingly corrupt, haughty and distant from the people, while at the same time becoming ever more dependent on the whims of a single person, President Traian Basescu.


And so it happened that the people who took to the streets in Targu Mures and in Cluj to make public their solidarity with Dr. Arafat were followed across Romania by people who started venting their anger at the President and called for his resignation.


Thousands of people gathered in Bucharest, first in front of Cotroceni Palace (the official residence of the President) and then in University Square (a place charged with symbolism, as it was here that people had gathered in 1989 to protest against Communism and in the early ‘90s to protest against the Neo-Communists then in power, thus becoming synonymous with the Romanian desire for freedom and civil liberties). They called for the resignation of President Basescu, who was again accused of having gained the second mandate by means of fraud, for the resignation of the whole Government, seen as incompetent and corrupt, and for early elections, as opposed to what the Government had proposed, namely postponing local elections from July until November.

This decision of the Government, of postponing local elections and bundling them with Parliamentary elections, is most unfortunate for our democratic system. During the electoral campaign, politicians will not be able to discuss efficiently neither local nor national themes and the result will be a cacophony of interventions: thirty days in which “local taxes” will compete for the attention of the voters with the “national healthcare system” and “sewage problems” with “our position with regard to the EU fiscal union”. What is more, people will be asked to vote for no less than six different things: local councillors, Mayor, County councillors, President of the County Council, Deputy and Senator. Imagine the confusion and the number of ballots cancelled for having been placed in the wrong ballot box.  


It is a sad day for a politician to owe his seat in one of the Chambers of the Parliament or in a Council to the sheer confusion of the electorate, but such is the disdain shown by the current Government to basic democratic principles that they will stoop even as low as that.


It is for these reasons that the people have taken to the streets and that the Opposition forces have called upon their sympathisers to join them in a march organised on Thursday, the 19th of January.