Romania: mass protests against corrupt Social Democrats go on

Romanian Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea is himself serving a suspended sentence for electoral fraud, photo by Partidul Social Democrat (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Mass protests – which forced the ruling Social Democrats in Romania to drop their executive order decriminalising some official corruption – have continued.

The scale of the street protests has not been seen since the overthrow of the Ceausescu dictatorship in 1989. The decree would have made official corruption a crime only punishable by jail if the sums involved exceeded 200,000 Romanian lei (£38,000).

The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) is the global socialist organisation which includes the Socialist Party. As CWI members in Romania say:

“With this executive order, the Social Democrats proved once more that they are not a left-wing party, who represent the interests of the working class and of oppressed social groups, but a party for the corrupt oligarchs and bureaucrats, a party whose minimal social measures are taken for the benefit of domestic capital.”