Protester dives off chamber balcony over cuts

ROMANIA’S Parliament cancelled a no-confidence vote yesterday after a man flung himself from the chamber’s balcony, apparently in protest over the government’s austerity measures. He was not seriously injured.

A loud thud reverberated in the chamber after the man, Adrian Sobaru — identified by the country’s public television station as one of its engineers — hit the benches shortly after Prime Minister Emil Boc greeted the lawmakers. No one else was injured.

Boc looked startled and rushed over to Sobaru, along with other lawmakers, before Speaker Mircea Geoana cancelled the session.

Romania’s government is mired in recession and it recently slashed public sector wages by one-fourth.

Sales tax was hiked from 19% to 24%, measures adopted by the government to keep the budget deficit at 6.8% in 2010.

Its economy is expected to decline by 2% this year, after it contracted by 7.1% in 2009.

Sobaru was standing on a balcony about 23 feet above where lawmakers were sitting, before he jumped.

More than half a dozen lawmakers watched him fall. Sobaru was wearing a white T-shirt, with the words “You’ve pierced us. You’ve killed our children’s future. Freedom,” in a reference to government policy.

The first line was a reference to President Traian Basescu who, upon winning the presidential race in 2009, said “I’ve pierced them,” using a well-known line from a Romanian movie.

As emergency medical workers took him out on a stretcher, Sobaru shouted “Freedom!” echoing cries of the 1989 revolution that brought down communism when more than 1,300 people died.

Romanians are commemorating the 21st anniversary of the uprising in which authorities shot unarmed protesters.