Anger and Mistrust Fuel Unabated Protests in Romania<br />Sunday was the 13th night in a row that protesters occupied Piata Victoriei — Victory Square — in Bucharest, after the government passed an emergency ordinance on Jan. 31<br />that effectively decriminalized some low-level corruption offenses, including cases of official misconduct in which the financial damage was less than 200,000 lei, or about $47,000.<br />12, 2017<br />BUCHAREST, Romania — Exactly one week after the largest protests in a quarter of a century rocked Romania, an estimated 70,000 demonstrators filled the<br />square outside the main government building in Bucharest on Sunday evening, determined to show those in power that the crisis was far from over.<br />While significantly less than the half a million who took to the streets across the country the previous Sunday, the Bucharest demonstration was still a potent sign of the resilient unrest in the country<br />and the loss of trust between the new government, only in office since the beginning of January, and a large sector of the population.<br />Many in the square on Sunday continued to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu, as well as the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies<br />and the Senate, among the highest political offices in the country.<br />According to Florin Badita, 28, an activist who has helped rally people through a Facebook group he created after<br />a deadly nightclub fire in 2015 — a disaster partly blamed on corruption — the protests are far from over.<br />One day later, the prime minister accepted the resignation of Florin Iordache, the minister of justice<br />and one of the architects of the emergency ordinance that was the catalyst for the protests.
