Anti-austerity revolt in Bucharest

Published on 16 January 2012 at 12:38

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Sixty injured and many shops ransacked are the result of a demonstration held in Bucharest on January 15 to demand the resignation of Romanian President Traian Băsescu, seen as responsible for the decline in the country's standard of living. The demonstration deteriorated when demonstrators were joined by extremist supporters of the capital's football clubs - mainly Steaua and Dinamo. For Romanian daily Adevărul, these events are the work of what, on the front page, it calls "Opportunists!" described as "the politicians [of the left opposition] and the delinquents" guilty of having "instrumentalised the original goal of the revolt."

Romanians' discontent has focused around the plan to privatise several social services including the SMURD, the emergency ambulance service. The proposal was withdrawn the following day, but the well-publicised resignation of SMURD head, Raed Arafat, revived the controversy. "The social trigger would have been pulled anyway," Adevărul argues. "Eight out of ten Romanians think that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the austerity measures [demanded by the International Monetary Fund in exchange for financial aid] are the price to pay" for Băsescu's policies, the paper explains.

Romanians are taking the same path as the Indignados in the United States, Europe and Putin's Russia.

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The leader writer of web site Gândul, on the other hand, argues that "what happened on Sunday night was inevitable but unacceptable":

I don't want to be represented in the street by such individuals, even if Băsescu gets on my nerves. He was not appointed by the Turks, the Russians or the Americans; he was elected by the citizens. He must leave in a democratic manner, adopting an approach in which we can all participate, and without any stone throwing.

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