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Romania is developing its own culture of protests

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Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#71
post #61
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#72
post #56
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#73
post #61
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

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

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#74
post #60
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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.

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#75
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's obvious we're leaving behind the old generation which loses it's grip. There's also the faint rising of a counter protest with a majority of old people and I'm certain they're being lied to or paid to go on the streets. The balance is obvious though and I'm proud of the outcome so far.

> and I'm certain they're being lied to or paid to go on the streets You realize both sides use this argument? It's not that either side is being lied to or paid; some people simply have different viewpoints on issues, as hard as that is to believe.

And some people are lied to and paid.

It's hard to see the difference from a distance, but as a general rule, always suspect the group that is in favor of the government. Even more if the protest is about investigating corruption.

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#76
post #47

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…

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.

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).)

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#77
post #26

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.)

We had 6M people protesting at the same time all over Brazil last year, AFAIK, with no single related event of violence.

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#78
post #17

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).

> 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.

Is that really true? The US as a whole has gotten more liberal. Do people become more conservative as they age, or is it just that their kids are even more liberal?

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#79
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Re: Romania is developing its own culture of protests

#80
post #17

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).

'Populism' in this context amounts to masses of decent people agreeing that wanting to give your mates in government 'get out of jail free' cards for sums under equivalent of £38,000 when you've defrauded some of the poorest people in Europe (the Romanian tax payers) is appalling corruption. Sounds good to me.
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