Klaus Iohannis: Unfortunately, people learned to protest, but governors didn't learn to behave nicely

President Klaus Iohannis, present at The Liederkranz of New York City for the launching of the book "EU.RO - an open dialogue about Europe", stated that, despite the fact that in the recent period Romanians learned to protest, governors did not learn to behave nicely.

Thus, when asked what is the reason for the numerous protests organized in Romania, Klaus Iohannis stated that after the Revolution of December 1989, Romanians desired a better life and a significant increase in their standards of living, but that for many these expectations were not met, also due to "inefficient" governing.

"Still, in this discontent I see some very beautiful signs that I consider essentially positive. Romanian society overcame its amorphous state, it is alive, it participates, it verbalizes expectations and when things go particularly bad people are willing to go out in the streets and I believe all these are very good signals. The society is alive, it participates in public life and Romanians understood that it is important to say what they want," he said.

Furthermore, the President made reference to the ample protests that took place at the beginning of 2017.

"An impressive number of Romanians came to Piata Victoriei (Victory Square) and those enormous and lengthy protests actually brought a result, because the ordinance that was issued was withdrawn. Unfortunately, people learned to protest, but the governors did not learn to behave nicely," the President mentioned.

He added that there is "profound discontent" in Romanian society, revealed also by the polls conducted in the past years, and that one of the reasons for that discontent is bad governing.

"Bad governing, which led in the past two years to institutionalized attacks of the governmental majority on justice, a letdown in public institutions. Many relatives, cronies, acquaintances ended up in key positions because they had the right party card and all these things led to a visible and profound degradation of public services and government performance. These things were visible with high clarity in the European Parliament elections, when the governing party scored very low," the President said.