Revolutionaries threaten to start protests this week if Prime Minister Emil Boc moves to limit payments of stipends for victims of the 1989 anti-communist revolution or their relatives. In a TV show on Thursday evening last week, the prime minister signalled that the stipends could be maintained only for descendants of people who were killed or severely injured in the revolution, underlining that the other payments are “unjustified” more than 20 years after the event.
“We are analysing such a move, it’s not easy because it’s a sensitive and difficult topic, but at the same time, I think that if we want to be fair with the country’s budget and the Romanians, we should first of all be concerned with the fate of descendants of those who died or were severely injured in the revolution. As for the rest, I think 20 years is more than enough,” Boc said, quoted by Mediafax. He explained that millions of Euro from the state budget go to these payments every year.
His comments were severely criticised by revolutionaries’ associations, some threatening to start protests in order to oust the prime minister. “We, many revolutionaries, get cursed for the ‘orange’ rule (e.n. in reference to the Democrat Liberal Party’s official colours), because we walked from door to door and we put up tents in the street to bring more votes. Mr. Emil Boc was an active member of the communist party. It’s time you tell him that we give him until Monday. We want a public denial of what was said. I have already called on people to start protests on Monday,” Daniel Perju with the Euro-Atlantica Revolutionaries’ League told Realitatea.net.
But the criticism did not deter Boc. In separate comments on Friday, the prime minister reiterated that his belief that financial support is to be granted first of all to relatives of those killed or badly injured in 1989. “We will run an analysis and discuss with everybody involved, with all cards on the table. (…) Based on the budget resources from now on, we will grant these rights starting with those who had victims or injured relatives,” Boc added.
