Romania's President Klaus Iohannis met yesterday (Friday) with the leaders
from a wide variety of civil society groups in order to hear their opinions
on what next steps the Romanian state should take to address issues
raised during the past four nights of street protests, and to try and
discern whether any consensus exists among these various groups.
A recommendation, that he should personally come to University
Square in order to hear directly from protesters, he agreed to do, though
he did not say when this would happen, probably because of concerns
for security, although the street protests have thus far
remained noisy but completely peaceful.
Meanwhile, Interim Prime Minister Sorin Cimpeanu, who served
as the Minister of Education in the former Ponta cabinet, took the
opportunity to report, in the interest of public transparency, that
93-percent of Romania's schools currently are operating without
meeting fire safety authorization standards, and a similar report
on Romania's hospitals is now being prepared and will be made
public very soon, he said.
The death toll from last weekend's nightclub fire at Club Colectiv
has risen from 32 to 39, and may climb further as those victims
currently hospitalized include many who are in critical condition.
International fundraising campaigns to raise money to pay for
the expensive hospital care of about 80 surviving burn victims
were launched by an assortment of sectors in society, from
musical groups to the red cross to professional organizations.
A number of those injured have been flown to the Netherlands
for specialized care in hospitals better equipped to aid in
treating their particular wounds.
The Romanian Orthodox Church has now held a memorial
service at the site of the fire, and Andrei Rieu, a prominent
violinist from the Netherlands, flew to Bucharest earlier today
to visit the Club Colectiv site and honor the fire victims.
A young mathematician from Romania, who I met a few months
ago here in San Francisco, and who is visiting Bucharest right
now, sent me this email last night:
"I met with a few friends who knew people that were
inside the nightclub that night. Definitely a lot of people
helped as best they could the Saturday after.
One of
my best friends from school was a regular at that place
actually and he was shocked and grateful to not have
gone that night."
So, thus far there's a fragile hope that this horrible fire accident
will galvanize the country to implement transformative changes
regarding long-entrenched corruption-practices and neglectful
government operations. If this happens, I foresee Romania
becoming a kind of "model", or case-study, for other parts of
the world (including Mexico) where young peoples' talents
are stymied by oligarchs and compromised elected officials.
ALLAN CRUSE
07 NOV 2015
UPDATES:
Twelve patrons who had suffered severe burn injuries during the Colectiv Club blaze
were flown by NATO on Sunday (Nov 8) to hospitals in the UK and in Norway.
Bogdan Enache, the drummer of the band playing at Club Colectiv, was put on a military
plane to Swizerland, but when his condition worsened in flight, pilots turned back to Romania,
and Enache died shortly after his plane landed, the BBC said.
Also, as promised, President Klaus Iohannis visited University Square
on Sunday evening (Nov 8) to speak directly with the protesters on their sixth
consecutive night of demonstrations. According to the Romanian News Agency
AGERPRESS:
Iohannis stood in the middle of the protesters of University Square
for about 20 minutes, talking directly with them and not delivering any
speech, although many protesters asked him to address the crowd through
a loudspeaker. ...
"I don't want to make a media event out of it, but I want to go talk
to the common people who are in the [University] Square, to tell me what they
expect of me, what they expect of the political class," Iohannis said.