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by xdennis
1884 days ago
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Just because it's banned doesn't mean the debate is over: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BytxHbenQyQ/V_O2hw4mUXI/AAAAAAAA8... Some western countries have respectably high numbers: France 50%, UK 48%, Holland 42%. Not that the USA wants to be compared to us, but here in Romania it's at 91% and we still don't have it. (I suspect that romantic notions of Vlad the Impaler's time has something to do with the percentage.) |
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In Romania, the death penalty was not abolished by any democratic institution and that action was not preceded by any public debate.
The gang who seized power in 1989 in Romania abolished the death penalty immediately after killing the dictator Ceausescu to remove the competition, because absolutely everybody expected that many other people who had important positions in the Communist must be also executed immediately, because only that would have been consistent with the messages spread by the new power in the previous days.
However, the people who had seized the power could not kill any other from the Communist leadership, because those were their friends, family or accomplices, so they used the surprise trick of promptly abolishing the death penalty.
This unexpected action was the moment when many people woke up from the euphoria after the supposed fall of the Communism and they began to suspect that the people composing the new power might not be who they claim to be, but it was already too late.
The immediate abolition of the death penalty in Romania had its desired effect, of transforming the former powerful communists into rich capitalists owning what had previously been called "the wealth belonging to all the people", so it is still strongly resented by many who remember those events.
So Romania is a very special case, which explains the unusually high percentage of support for the death penalty.