Cav's Place

I was saying I’m seriously considering more or less ignoring what The Romania Initiative (IR) is doing when it comes to selecting what to follow and add in these posts unless one of their actions grabs my attention otherwise, but they keep being particularly active in a way others aren’t. For that reason, despite my misgivings, let me quickly go through what they announced during the period covered in this post and get it out of the way, starting with launching an application on December 9 that lists politicians who have been found guilty of or are being investigated on criminal charges, those related to corruption in particular. Then, two days later, a few of their representatives met in the morning with a presidential adviser in order to argue in favor of changing the electoral law and also to present their plans to back a team of candidates for the Bucharest local elections, while in the evening there was a meeting between IR and The Group for Social Dialogue (GDS), supposedly also in order to move the above-mentioned plans forward. Finally, over the weekend they seem to have taken a team building trip.

Moving on, the week’s first event which at least should have been backed by the regular activists took place on December 10, though it in fact began when, on the evening of December 6, one activist sent an e-mail to those who had left their contact information during one of the forums that took place either in University Square or in Izvor Park. The message contained the text of the petition which was to be submitted to the Ombudsman, making the case in favor of changing the electoral law and asking him to challenge the current one at the Constitutional Court. Another message, sent by someone else to the entire list three days later, called people to gather in University Square that same evening in order to sign the petition, and since I could see a number of signatures there the next day, I assume that a handful did come in spite of the short notice.
In fact, I may assume that more came then than the next morning, when all of ten of us showed up by noon, when three were allowed inside to file the petition, two remaining for an audience. The event had asked people to gather in front of the Ombudsman’s office starting at 11 AM, but it wasn’t promoted through the usual channels, so doubt that many even knew of it, though it’s also true that, with the exception of those who requested the audience, there was little point in coming there except to add a signature to the list if you hadn’t already and we didn’t stick around until the two who were inside returned. As such, all I know is what was posted later, namely that the Ombudsman said he could add more reasons to challenge the current laws on top of those listed and welcomes additions by e-mail, but while there have been a few recent exceptions, his institution generally doesn’t challenge laws that the parties represented in the Parliament achieved consensus on, so there are no promises that anything will actually happen. The activists who wrote the petition are determined to go to court if nothing does, however.

As for the week’s final event, it took place on December 12, when a small protest was organized at the entrance of Izvor Park across the road from the Chamber of Deputies entrance of the Parliament. The reason was that, after repeated delays, a law banning smoking in public indoor spaces was at risk of being postponed until at least February, the current week being the last during which it could be approved until then. In addition, tobacco industry representatives regularly took part in the discussions and some worrying amendments were included, such as requiring the creation of smoking areas adjacent to the indoor spaces the law will ban smoking in and with too few limits or safeguards to prevent most of the activity taking place in those designated smoking areas.
As far as I know, this wasn’t promoted at all through the usual channels and at least a few known activists are actually against such a law, but some others clicked that they were “interested” or even “going” and a few actually showed up, though none of those who’d necessarily first come to mind when thinking of the United We Save Community were among the 50 or so who were present. A few more may have arrived later if we’d have been able to stay longer, but the gendarmes were there a few minutes after the announced start time, which was at noon, and after negotiations that lasted until close to 12:20 PM we were only given until 12:35 PM at the very most, so a brief speech was followed by a few chants and then we stood in a single line, wearing the surgical masks someone had brought and holding a few signs and the one banner, before scattering.