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Parliament's MPs met on Monday to mark the 34th anniversary of the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
The interim speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Social Democrat Alfred Simonis, evoked the memory of the Romanians who resisted, even at the cost of their lives, the repressive communist system and brought freedom.
"December '89 brought us the gift of freedom, the gift of renewed faith, renewed hope, confidence in a better future, and the price paid for all this was extremely high. Over 1,000 dead and thousands more wounded. Romanians no longer tolerated the cold, hunger and censorship and went out to shout their discontent and their needs, they did it for the first time in Timisoara," said Simonis.
Save Romania Union (USR) leader Catalin Drula said that during the Revolution people fought for freedom and against the nomenclature, and nowadays there is "a new nomenclature", "a plague of the special ones".
"Democracy is fragile and must be fought for every day, and the times we live in today show us that many of those things that were fought for in 1989, many of those values are not achieved or are in regression. (...) We see a plague of our days, the plague of the special ones, this new nomenclature, there was fighting in 1989 against the nomenclature and we have a duty to fight for what the people of 1989 also fought for with their lives, to do it every day in order to achieve those ideals," Drula said.
National Liberal Party (PNL) deputy Daniel Gheorghe said that the December 1989 Revolution represents "a turning point" for today's Romania.
"All the gifts we have today, which we enjoy: freedom of expression, of speech, material well-being, the right to think for ourselves, (...) the fact that we managed to become part of NATO and the European Union, all these things are due to the sacrifice of December 1989. (...) I believe that none of us can ever be nostalgic after what the criminal and totalitarian communist regime meant," said the liberal MP.
The leader of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) MPs, Csoma Botond, said that Romanians and Hungarians were on the same side during the 1989 Revolution.
"Romanians and Hungarians fought together in Timisoara and in the other cities of Romania for the abolition of the communist regime. And, in this perspective, I must also mention the reformed priest Tokes Laszlo, who, through his action in Timisoara, through his anti-communist action, contributed fully to the start of the anti-communist revolution. Ceausescu's regime was a neo-Stalinist, nationalist, ethnicist regime, it was against human rights and it was against everyone. It was against both Romanians and Hungarians," said the UDMR MP.
According to the leader of the national minorities group, Varujan Pambuccian, the Romanians' duty is to remain free, "outside the granite block in which we lived, breathing on a card, just the thought was free."
