Seems like you haven't been using the Object Pascal dialects of Delphi or PascalABC, which let you declare variables everywhere. In the case of Delphi, Embarcadero has been making it as easy as possible to switch between their Delphi and C++Builder products lines.

For Free Pascal, the developers and many users voted against that, because it appears the opinion was it leads to sloppy code and unnecessary errors. The other point, is that Object Pascal has for a very long time allowed nested functions, so it wasn't arguably that much of an issue for those on that side. It seems more like C/C++ users wanted to force their habits on Pascal, which Embarcadero sold out to, for a few extra dollars. PascalABC, copied what Delphi was doing, who they use as a quasi-standard.