Romania’s government decriminalized some official misconduct and pardoned thousands of convicts late on Tuesday night, as citizens gathered to publicly protest the move, which is seen as a new obstacle in the fight against corruption in the country. The measure, adopted by emergency ordinance to bypass Parliament, would decriminalize the offense of official misconduct in cases where the damage was valued at less than 200,000 lei (44,000 euros). By late Wednesday, the protest outside government offices in Bucharest had grown to at least 150,000 people.