Cav's Place

The daily protests continued during this period, as when I looked for them I even found a couple of posts mentioning a few people who showed up, again in Victory Square, even on December 25 and 26, but otherwise I haven’t seen these daily protests promoted or even mentioned by the activists or pages I’d normally check after December 23. As such, I’ll just set aside this part about the daily protests after mentioning that the event created for December 21 called for people to circle the Parliament in their cars, motorcycles or bicycles while the regulars continued the protest in the designated area, a few posts mentioning that some did do that for a while, and that the last event I saw created for such a daily protest at the Parliament, without any other special plans, was on December 22.

Moving on, last week’s main protest was scheduled on Saturday instead of Sunday, and people were also asked to start arriving in Victory Square at 4 PM, which was obviously far too early and just caused the handful who did arrive around that time to stand around for quite some time for no reason. Knowing that, I took my time and only got there at 5:40 PM, spending some five or so minutes longer going around the area before joining the others, not that there were that many more even then. Still, there were some 300, or even just 200 according to some media estimates, when the march did eventually start, at 7 PM, one hour later than planned.
Some of the protesters may have already left by then and it was obvious that many of the rest weren’t going to stay much longer if nothing was going to happen, which those who have become the more known faces of these Victory Square protests pointed out to the gendarmes when they explained why they wanted to start marching then, with so few, despite having apparently told them earlier that we’ll leave when 500 will gather. Not that the explanation did much good, the gendarmes obviously being quite pleased with the prospect of the protest simply ending there, without a march, but eventually we did leave, albeit only being allowed to use the sidewalk, plus the bicycle lane on a part of the route, considering the numbers.
Not much to be said otherwise, but since I did write down a few more times, I will say we reached the Royal Palace at 7:35 PM, stopping for a bit to hold a moment of silence, and got to the Parliament around 8:10 PM, joining the others who had chosen to go there directly a few minutes later. I guess some more people may have joined on the way, but the number of participants didn’t grow significantly and plenty of those who had participated in the march started leaving soon after reaching the Parliament. I for one wandered around a little, took the last of the evening’s pictures, and left as well at 8:30 PM.

Otherwise, on the morning of December 23, 43 groups and organizations involved in this year’s protests sent an open letter to the Prime Minister, requesting a meeting in order to have a “calm and rational” discussion about the current situation. That same day, the Prime Minister replied and agreed, offering December 27 as the date. As a result, seven representatives of those organizations met with him yesterday morning, stating that they do not go there to negotiate, but to demand, the demands being to immediately request the opinion of the Venice Commission regarding the proposed changes to the justice system, to delay the entry into force of these changes until the Commission will present its opinion regarding them, and to remove the Minister of Justice from office. In addition, at least one of the representatives brought up the matter of the way in which the public gatherings law is interpreted when it comes to protests, a discussion with representatives of the Gendarmerie apparently being supposed to follow as a result.
At the end of the meeting, the representatives of the organizations stated that they were disappointed with the result, though I’m wondering why did they expect anything to come of such a meeting. Either way, they stated that the only actual answer they got was to the first demand, and even that wasn’t a clear one, the Prime Minister merely saying that before the end of the year he’ll inform himself regarding the existing discussions with the Commission and will decide accordingly. The answers to the other two demands were apparently even more evasive, but understood as rejections. I’ll say again that it’d have been quite a shock if it’d have been otherwise.

Both those who attended the meeting and the other activists and protesters state that the only solution is to continue the protests, and now there are even more reasons to do so as well, yesterday’s major piece of news regarding these matters being that another proposal, making quite a number of things a whole lot worse, almost unbelievably so in some cases even when considering PSD’s insolence, has gathered dozens of signatures from PSD members and is actually being put forward. In spite of that, those who try to organize these protests to some extent seem to have finally realized that you can’t just keep pushing people to attend protests all the time, and even less so during this time of year and also when, unlike in many of the previous situations, this time around it seems to be a losing battle. As such, the next protest I saw announced is scheduled on January 20, when people from all over the country are called to Bucharest in what is hoped to be another massive protest, after people will have time to rest and recover, and likely to once again accumulate more discontent and anger as well, without constantly dissipating it all in small doses, on weekly or even daily protests that just keep getting weaker otherwise.