Snow dampens Romania anti-government protests

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanians protested against austerity measures on Saturday but heavy snow deterred some from pressing a week of occasionally violent demonstrations demanding the government resign.

Romania had suffered little of the unrest seen in other austerity-hit European countries like Greece until now. While the protests have been relatively small, they have marked the country's worst violence in more than a decade.

On Saturday, several hundred people assembled for a ninth successive day in Bucharest's University Square, known as 'Kilometre Zero of Democracy' for its role in the 1989 anti-communist revolution - a smaller number than in preceding days.

Chanting "revolution", some waved banners saying they would press on with protests until President Traian Basescu and his close ally Prime Minister Emil Boc resigned.

About 1,000 rallied in the southern city of Craiova and there were smaller protests elsewhere.

"They've done only bad moves, the government does nothing to raise our living standards. Our low pay makes us second-hand Europeans," said 42-year old Daniela Lupu, a public clerk at the demonstrations.

Boc has cut salaries by 25 percent and raised the sales tax to put the European Union's second-poorest country, where per capita income is less than half the bloc's average, on a more solid footing after recession.

That has left him struggling to hang on to power in a parliamentary election due late in the year but the protests are unlikely to be enough to force early polls or change policies which maintain an International Monetary Fund-led deal.

"Every day this government remains in power is a day in which Romania loses money, loses opportunities, loses jobs," said Victor Ponta, co-leader of the fragile leftist opposition USL alliance.

MORE PROTESTS PLANNED

On Thursday, some 7,000 opposition supporters rallied in Bucharest and some joined a separate anti-austerity protest, where police fired tear gas against demonstrators, some of whom threw bricks and rubbish bins.

That was the biggest demonstration in Romania since 2010, but still far smaller than in countries like Spain, Greece, France or Britain. Trade unions are organizing a rally next week and other protests, including those by laid off workers from the defense sector, are also planned.

Opinion polls put Boc's centrist PDL at 18 percent support, compared with about 50 percent for the USL, and analysts say the protests are unlikely to affect policy or force the government out at this stage.

Basescu has so far not commented on the protests and Boc, visiting a motorway construction site, stressed the government's achievement of economic stability, with growth of about 2.5 percent last year after recession.

"I understand the unhappiness of Romanians," Boc said. "I am just as convinced, along with my colleagues, that the measures were absolutely necessary and correct."