
Romania is developing its own culture of protests - oblio
http://www.euronews.com/2017/02/06/view-romania-politics-protests-corruption
======
padrian2s
Hello World! From Romania. I am 37yr old and for the last 13yr software
developer. That's why I'm writing on HN, my primary SRC of information for the
last 7 yr.

First of all, please look at Romania, look what we are doing and for what we
are fighting and do a _replicate_ on your Country IIf your Gov does not
respect your primary rights or you feel that your nation is going into the
wrong direction.

(America, Poland and Hungary, can YOU hear us?)

Also, what is important, we, people from RO Street, fully support European
Union. The most important Peace Project ever created. We Love EU. Please fight
for EU, do not let anyone tear us apart. We must remain strong to our European
culture and principles.

I do apologize if my message is too political with respect to HN nature.

We know that America is 1st. But, can we say... Romania 2nd?

Best regards!

~~~
owaislone
Obviously The Netherlands is 2nd. Romania can be 3rd. Okay? It'll be great.
Trust me.

~~~
padrian2s
Okay! It'll be great.

------
oblio
To be honest I'm quite proud how the protests went. More akin to Ghandi's
protests than to rioters burning cars.

It's going to be a long struggle but thankfully the groups most supportive of
populism and therefore corruption are older (>50).

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _It 's going to be a long struggle but thankfully the groups most supportive
> of populism and therefore corruption are older (>50)._

On the flip side, this might be just the natural shift in people's political
views as they get older. I mean, the same argument is made by liberals in the
US, forgetting that people simply become more conservative as they are aging.

~~~
samsonradu
Right, they get older, poorer (since our retirement plans are terrible) and in
need of the socialist measures which our left party promises.

~~~
petre
They expect a benevolent dictator and/or a nanny state to do stuff for them,
give them a job, a roof over their heads, food etc. This is how they were
raised and educated during communism. They did not and will not adapt to
capitalism and the free market.

The leftist klepto mafia party PSD promised things to these people in exchange
for their votes. They are screwing up those who work or at least try to make
an honest living, those who contribute to the county's GDP and expect their
taxpayer money buy infrastructure, hospitals, schools, kindergartens instead
of lining politicians' pockets.

~~~
samsonradu
Firstly I'd like not to attack any party in paticular, all have done bad
things in the past years.

Life seems easy when you are young and educated but for old people it is hard
to keep up with the pace of technology, even if they are educated. The abrupt
transition to capitalism didn't help either. This is a common issue in many
countries, not just ex-communist ones. Old people need a safety net and
Romania has it broken.

~~~
petre
The issue here is corruption, not socialism. Socialism is just another pretext
for legalized theft: give the elderly inadaptable and the nostalgics some
breadcrumbs to keep them busy while the politicians steal the bread factory.

I'm attacking the party that has more members with criminal records than all
others combined. An organized criminal gang controls this praty. The president
of the Chamber of Deputies who's also the president of this party already has
a criminal record for election tampering and is currently under investigation
for abuse of power. The president of the Senate is currently under
investigation for perjury and aiding the felon. This is without even counting
the many members of their parties who have been prosecuted and/or sent to
jail.

------
baby
It's interesting that you currently have one of the largest "political"
peaceful demonstrations in the world right now in Korea and in Romania and not
many people are talking about it. (I'm happy to see this bit of news on HN.)

~~~
mtgx
Most of the media is only interested in covering "violent protests" so they
can help their buddies in power by discrediting the protesters.

Those who watched the U.S. elections closely in 2015 and 2016 already know the
media had zero interest in covering real issues, and they would much rather do
a one-day marathon about Trump calling someone a pussy. And now the same media
blames the Russians or whoever that Trump is in power, even though they are
the ones making him a TV star with their non-stop coverage of him.

~~~
jpkeisala
I don't think its that much of "help their buddies in power by discrediting
the protesters." as it is simply more entertainment. I remember someone asking
from Cops tv-show maker why there is always African-American suspect and not a
crooked banker. Where the guy simply answers if you can get crooked banker to
take his shirt of and run down to street cops behind and we will film it.

~~~
adrianN
I believe Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine was asking those questions.

------
samsonradu
I had a very positive feeling about the people's atitude and what they
achieved by protesting, considering that the government did a terrible thing
from all points of view. There was probably no other way to roll it back but
for how things went. However I'm concerned though that the majority of people
misuse their voting power and make bad choices. It happened that the oposition
wanted to stop this and all the media was encouraging people to go out and
protest. Think what happens when both parties/coalitions agree on a bad
law/resolution and it all goes under the table.

Point is this is not the way to go on the long term. We were lucky this time
but it's gonna fail soon. We need to educate people better in hope that they
will cast their vote properly.

~~~
rumcajz
Direct democracy could help here. Ask people whether they want to
decriminalize corruption and even those who voted for populists are going to
say no.

~~~
paulnechifor
Are you sure about that?

The president did trigger a referendum on this, but the ruling party jumped
the gun and passed (and now revoked) this law before the referendum question
was even finalized. The referendum will still go ahead.

Even if you phrase the question as "Do you want to decriminalize corruption?",
or a more probable "Do you agree with softening the legislation toward
combating corruption?" a significant amount of people will say yes, not
because they think corruption is good, but rather they've been lead to believe
that the National Anticorruption Directorate is biased toward PSD (the
successor to the communist party).

(Small note, the two main networks saying this are Antena 3 (whose owner is in
prison and would have benefited from this law) and Romania TV (whose owner is
on the loose and on Europol's most wanted list).)

~~~
petre
The Anticorruption Directorate is not biased. They just happened to catch more
criminals out of PSD simply because PSD is ridden by criminals. It is the
party of the former communist secret police and their friends, disguised as
_socialists_.

------
subpixel
I just watched and enjoyed Cristian Mungiu's latest film (Graduation) about a
parent who gets caught up in government corruption while trying to ensure that
his child gets a chance to leave the Romania for college.

Two thumbs up.

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/19/graduation-
revi...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/19/graduation-review-
cristian-mungiu-romania-cannes-2016)

------
PunchTornado
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?

~~~
Sylphine
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.

~~~
cmarinas
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..."?).

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

~~~
garrettgrimsley
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99escu%27s_final_speech)

~~~
petre
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.

------
delegate
We're seeing another "social media revolution" \- fuelled by Facebook (et al)
on one side and old-school TV stations controlled by local oligarchs on the
other.

Young, high tech, well-dressed, global 'hipsters' who live online versus older
people, mostly rural, former communists, peasants or factory workers, who have
no hope of adapting to the new incomprehensible tech world around them.

People from the first group work mostly at multinationals or are
entrepreneurs/artists/etc while the second group live on state pensions or
have administrative roles offered by the ruling political party - the
modernised communists.

First group are people who've tasted freedom and are trying to live
'independent' lives, while the second group cannot imagine living without a
strict social hierarchy, in which one must do what he's told - vestige of the
communist system, in which everybody had his 'master'.

The second group has had numerical majority in the December elections -
because of better mobilisation, so they elected the party who promised them
higher pensions and other populist dreams..

We've seen this phenomenon play out in many countries already.

So far these protests have been peaceful - these young people know how to
behave peacefully in crowds - after having enjoyed themselves at massive
festivals and concerts that have invaded the post-communist Romania in the
last decade or so.

Let's hope that they stay that way - there are some evil slogans being shouted
on both sides, but so far the youth has had the upper hand, combined with the
moral handicap of the second group - turns out not all of them want to save
the criminals and corrupt oligarchs from prisons.

What's next ? The crowd won, the government withdrew the controversial
ordinance, but how will they be able to continue business as usual now that
they've accepted their own incompetence just one month after taking office ?

Will they do another stupid thing and have the crowds 'fix' it for them ? If
this happens, then why not actually implement it in software and avoid massive
mobilisation risking all kinds of crowd-related dangers ?

Unfortunately this is where Facebook falls short - it's good at creating
massive crowds - but stops being useful once crowds are in place.

I think it's up to Romanians now to invent a new system of government, where
the crowd can have a voice without filling the streets every week.

Representative democracy is unable to cope with the new technological
realities so I think it's time to move on to the next level of governance.

Time to move the government into the smartphones - replace Facebook with
'Society OS' (or extend Facebook to include it).

My biggest hope is that the transition to this new society will be peaceful
and devoid of violence.

~~~
zuzuleinen
"Young, high tech, well-dressed, global 'hipsters' who live online versus
older people, mostly rural, former communists, peasants or factory workers,
who have no hope of adapting to the new incomprehensible tech world around
them."

No, it's young people against corruption. Nobody is protesting against old
people benefits.

~~~
rootlocus
Actually, it's both young and old people against corruption.

------
petre
There's even a game: [http://psdinvaders.com/](http://psdinvaders.com/)

------
jjawssd
The very first question people should be asking is if these are organic
protests or part of something bigger.

~~~
alexgotoi
As one of the firsts protestants, I can tell you that is an organic one.
Everyone is sharing the same scope: fight against corruption in RO.

