Parliament discusses August 10 protests

The power and the opposition engage in heated debate in Parliament over protest last month.

Bogdan Matei, 12.09.2018, 12:15

The anti-government protest of
August 10 in Bucharest and the situation of the justice system and the rule of
law in Romania will be debated in the European Parliament in early October. It
was therefore normal for the Romanian Parliament to have its own internal
discussion on the matter.

On Tuesday, the Chamber of Deputies
debated a simple motion filed by the Liberal Party, the largest opposition
party, against Social-Democrat Interior Minister Carmen Dan. The Liberals
accuse Minister Dan of coordinating the repressive intervention in the
anti-government protest organised by associations of Romanians in the diaspora
and marked by violent clashes between protesters and the riot police. Hundreds
of people on both sides were wounded and over a hundred thousand mostly
peaceful protesters inhaled tear gas.

Minister Dan told Parliament she was
confident the gendarmes’ intervention was legal and gave assurances that the
perpetrators of the acts of violence would be brought to justice. Minister Dan went
on to say that no civil organisation claimed responsibility for the protest,
even though some of them originally supported and promoted the event. Carmen
Dan:

The August 10 protest was not
peaceful. Everyone could see that people forcefully tried to enter the
Government building and attacked the gendarmes and engaged in acts of
vandalism. Any possible excessive individual response from gendermes will be
punished under the law.

The Liberals in turn claim the
Interior Minister is fully responsible for the gendarmes’ intervention against
a peaceful crowd, including women and children, and that Romania’s image abroad
was dealt a severe blow. The leader of the Liberal deputies Raluca Turcan
compared the incidents on August 10 with the miner raids thirty years ago, when
the former communist President Ion Iliescu at the time called on miners from
the Jiu Valley to help repress the protests against the power, which resulted
in deaths, people wounded and a traumatised city. Raluca Turcan:

Your arguments are unconvincing. On
August 10, Madam Minister, you were in the command room of the gravest form of
repression of citizen rights since the miner raids of 1990, and for that you
will pay!

Some voices within the ruling coalition
say it is not Parliament’s job to investigate the August 10 protest, but the
responsibility of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, which has already launched
an investigation. News agencies note that, in the wake of the protest, a
conflict has erupted within the Social Democratic Party between Bucharest Mayor
Gabriela Firea and party leader Liviu Dragnea, who has constantly supported
Minister Dan. The press further writes that, in the year Romania celebrates 100
years since the Great Union, Romanian society is more dived than ever.