May 4 (SeeNews) - Some 2,000 people gathered on Wednesday night in Bucharest to protest against intentions to include some corruption offences in a draft bill on prison pardons.
On Wednesday, the legal affairs committee in the upper house of Romania's Parliament, the Senate, approved amendments to a draft pardon bill to include offences such as influence peddling and bribery. This takes the bill closer to a vote in parliament.
The protest in Victoriei square, in central Bucharest, was announced in Facebook and was attended by some 2,000 people, according to local media reports.
At the beginning of February, the Social Democrat cabinet led by Sorin Grindeanu approved an emergency decree which amended the Criminal Code in a way that would have made abuse of office punishable by jail only if the sums involved exceeded 200,000 lei ($47,971/44,000 euro).
The decree was hastily published in the country's Official Gazette, sparking the biggest rallies in Romania since the fall of communism in 1989. Yielding to public pressure, the government repealed the decree on February 5, but street rallies continued until the beginning of March, with demands for the resignation of the government.
Romania's Social and Political Studies Institute, ISSPOL, released a poll in mid-February, according to which support for left-wing Social Democrat Party (PSD) had dropped to 31% from 46% shortly before the December 11 elections. Yet, PSD remains the political party for which most people will vote in case of early elections, followed by centre-right political formations National Liberal Party (PNL) with 17%, Liberal-Democrat Alliance (ALDE) with 2% and Popular Movement Party (PMP) with 1%, according to the ISSPOL survey.
The poll, in which 965 eligible voters were interviewed nationwide, has a margin of error of +/-3.2%.
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