Following five days of epic protests, Romania PM says the government will repeal corruption legislation

Romania's premier announced Saturday a dramatic climbdown on contentious corruption legislation after five days of demonstrations that were the biggest since the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

Sorin Grindeanu told a hastily convened news conference that the government would meet on Sunday to repeal the emergency decree that had raised worries of a retreat in the fight against graft.

"I do not want to divide Romania," Grindeanu said at government headquarters in Bucharest, prompting celebrations among the estimated 120,000 people protesting outside for the fifth evening in a row.

The decree, passed late on Tuesday and due to enter into force on Feb. 10, was to make abuse of power a crime only punishable by jail if the sums involved exceeded 200,000 lei ($47,500).

The left-wing government, which has been in office barely a month, also wants in a separate decree to free some 2,500 people from prison serving sentences of less than five years.

Grindeanu, from the left-wing Social Democrats, had said that the measures were to bring penal law into line with the constitution and reduce overcrowding in prisons.

Critics had said that the real aim was to let off some of the several thousand officials and politicians ensnared in a major anti-corruption drive in recent years, many of them from the PSD.

Earlier this week Brussels, which had previously praised European Union member Romania for its efforts on graft, warned against "backtracking."

The US State Department said it was "deeply concerned" that the new measures "undermine rule of law and weaken accountability for financial and corruption-related crimes."

On Saturday, Grindeanu said that the penal code still had to be fixed but that a bill would be sent to parliament and the proposed 200,000-lei limit scrapped.

Noisy protests 

But most worried of all were ordinary Romanians, who poured onto the streets in numbers not seen since people power ousted Ceausescu and consigned the communist system to history in 1989.

Saturday saw a noisy march by tens of thousands of people, holding banners, waving flags and blowing whistles and vuvuzela horns, to the parliament building where they formed a human chain.

On Friday night there were between 200,000 and 250,000 people demonstrating around the country, and on Wednesday as many as 300,000 according to estimates by Romanian media.

"It's about the future of our children, for our kids. We want justice to be made," said Georgiana Dragoi, who took part in a protest of families with children on Saturday morning.

Friday's protest in the capital, which drew around 100,000 people, saw effigies of government officials in prison fatigues and a coffin marked "Romanian justice" paraded through the crowds to jeers.

Deadly fire 

The PSD has only just returned to power after handsomely winning elections on Dec. 11 promising to boost salaries and pensions in the EU's second-poorest country.

This was barely a year after public anger over a deadly nightclub blaze, blamed on corrupt officials turning a blind eye to fire regulations, drove the PSD-led government from office.

One of those marching on Saturday was Mihail Grecea, 42, who was fortunate to survive the nightclub fire thanks to a risky pulmonary operation, he said. Two friends were among the 64 people who died.

"I am lucky to be alive. And now I am here, protesting," he told AFP, his arm still wrapped in a bandage. 

The fire "was the fault of the system … What the government is doing is taking the country back 20 years."

Civil servant Alexander, 30, pushing his baby in a pram in the demonstration, said that he regularly experiences graft in his daily life.

Corruption "is all around us, small things that make our lives much more difficult," he told AFP. "I work in the system and for a person inside it is terrifying."