Suspended from PSD posts, Iasi mayor adopts Romanian protesters’ slogan

Mihai Chirica, the mayor of Iasi and a former vice-president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), ended a Facebook post last week with the slogan #rezist, a trademark of the protesters who took to the streets in recent weeks against the now repealed emergency ordinancethat attempted to change the country’s criminal laws, and against the Grindeanu government. Chirica lost his party titles after a PSD executive committee meeting last week. He used to be one of the party’s national VPs and the president of the PSD organization in the Iasi county. He was the only member of the PSD leadership to speak out against the ordinance. In the days immediately following the passing of the emergency ordinance OUG 13, Chirica had said he would want the ordinance withdrawn, and called for the justice minister’s resignation. The #rezist slogan, one of the most often seen messages on the placards used by protesters, became a Facebook community, a profile photo stripe, and was inscribed on badges, and more recently on martisoare. Chirica wrote the post to congratulate the Iasi citizens for the “support of democracy and of European values.” “My recent public statements weren’t meant to turn the public space into a political one! I have supported and will always support the idea of a real democracy, both in the political arena and outside of it,” Chirica wrote on Facebook. Chirica said he would continue to remain a PSD party member. “It is a world premiere, when the president of an organization who told the truth is being punished for it. I am a PSD member, I am the mayor of Iasi, I have a community that I need to represent. No one forced me to join the PSD. It is a road I have chosen and I will go further with this. The decision was to remain a PSD member without a political leadership post,” Chirica said, quoted by Mediafax. Chirica also said that the PSD president Liviu Dragnea had been misinformed about his statements. “I am disappointed that many untrue things were said about my public statements […]. The president was misinformed about my attack on the PSD, on the Grindeanu government, which never happened,” Chirica said. Chirica could have also been excluded from the party but the PSD president Dragnea said he refused to initiate a vote on the issue, at the same executive committee meeting. Arguing that that such a vote would have overwhelmingly been in favor of the exclusion, Dragnea said he was expecting Chirica to understand “why the PSD got so nervous following his public statements.” At the same time, Dragnea explained that all the PSD executive committee members conveyed to Chirica the message that the things he said should have been presented at the party’s internal meetings, from which he was absent. Several other PSD members have come out recently with critical messages over the OUG 13 emergency ordinance. Former prime minister and PSD president Victor Ponta argued that the Liviu Dragnea and prime minister Sorin Grindeanu were wrong not to back up the ordinance. “It was a lack of support. You cannot blame everything on [e.n. former justice minister] Iordache. Mr. Tariceanu, Dragnea and Grindeanu should have said it in broad daylight. […] Besides, there was no communication. Everything was a mistake. […] Nobody understood anything. A good and correct idea became a disaster. […] An important part of society, whoever they are, is against the PSD. […] I didn’t understand what was going on. I did not want thieves to be released from prisons,” Ponta said in a TV show, quoted by