Moldovan Independence Day

In my Facebook feed, I saw a witty observation flash by today - "Moldova has always been independent - nothing ever depended on it." Nicu Popescu had a very interesting post today, which I'd translate if I had time, about the Moldovan mentality of dependence (he developed the theme further in this interview).

But I'm going to use the day as an excuse to post some of my photos from last year's celebration of the holiday. A year ago today, I got up well before 9am, quite a feat on a holiday for someone who had just been a student for three years, and made it down to Chisinau's main square to watch the ceremony of flower-laying at the statue of Ştefan cel Mare.

I have no idea how the festivities went down today (actually, with the exception of Lupu's absence, it looks like a familiar scene - Zina shi Vologhea u Shtefana), but I'd imagine there is a more tense atmosphere this year, as tomorrow marks the first meeting of parliament after the July 29th repeat elections. The current government ministers will tender their resignations, and the no-longer-opposition will be able to form a new government (though it lacks the 61 votes required in Parliament to choose a new President).

According to the excellent Morning in Moldova blog, it is absolutely imperative that a speaker of parliament be elected tomorrow. Imedia reports (on their excellent and extremely useful new English-language blog) that the members of the Alliance for European Integration, recently formed from the four opposition parties that made it into parliament on July 29, may not quite be done haggling over who gets the spot. Of greater concern is the fact that the Communist Party this week stated that it will not negotiate with the Alliance as a whole, but would be happy to negotiate with the individual parties that make up the Alliance, suggesting that the horse-trading over who becomes the country's next President (and of course the side deals that may be necessary to arrive at a compromise on that central issue) may just be heating up.

Anyway, I prefer to think back to a happier time - last year, when I was still enveloped in post-bar-exam bliss, and April 7th was just another insignificant date like any other...

IMG_7941-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
PM Zinaida Greceanii, President Vladimir Voronin and then-Speaker of Parliament
Marian Lupu, accompanied by the Patriarch - separation of church and state is so
overrated - approach the Stefan statue, preceded by goose-stepping soldiers...

IMG_7965-2, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
...proceed past the assembled press corps...

IMG_7952, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
...and prepare for the flower-laying.

IMG_7979, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Meanwhile, lesser lights await their turn to lay flowers of their own, and
the bigwigs' chariots stand ready, lined up with military precision.

IMG_8002-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Who will get that license plate next?

IMG_8016, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Even here, some jackass opinionated individual showed up with one of those pro-unification t-shirts.
A bit like showing up to a 4th of July celebration with a t-shirt claiming the US in George III's name.
Well, not really, but I couldn't think of a better analogy.

IMG_8010, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

And the band played on...

IMG_8039, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Celebratory flags outside Chisinau's City Hall.

IMG_8036, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Beer tents set up in anticipation of a concert planned for that evening.

IMG_8022, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
At the time, I wondered if the arrows on the sign at right symbolized
Moldova's unfortunately non-straightforward road toward Europe.

IMG_8021, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
The holiday was known as Independence Day for years (still is, officially and colloquially).
Therefore, when I saw the signs on the stage on PMAN proclaiming it Republic Day, I
immediately recalled how for many years June 12th in Russia was celebrated as
Independence Day (though not without some bemused wondering about "who did
we become independent from, anyway?") but under Putin became known as the more
bombastic Russia Day. "Further evidence of Putinism in Moldova?" I wondered lazily.

IMG_8029, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

Moldova's repeat elections - the "Battle of the documentaries" and the online campaign

"Бес-при-дел", originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, May 25, 2009.
The word scrawled on the concrete, which should actually be
spelled "беспредел," means "lawlessness" or "chaos" in Russian

An earlier post of mine provided a few places to go for good analysis and updates on today's elections in Moldova. Additional sites to check are ADEPT's website, alegeri.md (also in English and Russian) and the website of the Moldovan Central Election Commission (showing a fairly high turnout as of 3:45pm local time). Before I head out to the Moldovan Embassy way out in Chiswick to provide moral support to my better half as she votes, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane through the campaign that was, to provide some basic background for those who have not been following it - while trying not to get too bogged down in the minutiae - as well as add a bit of detail about how the campaign has spilled over into the interwebs. I saw the lead-up to the repeat election campaign, as I was in Moldova from late May through June 21, but I had to follow the past five weeks online.

Sadly, only today did I re-discover Morning in Moldova, a wonderful (and unusual) English-language blog about Moldova, which I had seen briefly in the frenzy of link-hopping I engaged in while trying to keep up with the events that followed the April elections. The coverage at MiM is worth reading; I especially liked this attempt to map out Moldova's political scene.

The repeat elections, of course, were made necessary by the inability of the parliament chosen in the April 5 elections to choose a president to succeed Vladimir Voronin, who is term-limited out and has become a creaky dinosaur holding his country - and perhaps even his own party - back. Voronin managed the nifty trick of being both acting president and speaker of parliament (a post he will try to retain - a la Putin, or to use Voronin's own analogy, Deng Xiaoping - depending on how well his Communist Party, the PCRM, does today). The major reason there was no compromise in parliament was extreme societal polarization and outrage - and somewhat unexpected unity - on the part of the three opposition parties who made it into the legislature in the wake of demonstrations on April 7th which turned violent.

Who is ultimately to blame for the violence remains something of a mystery, although looking at qui prodest it should be noted that the burning of parliament and the presidential building arguably played into the hands of ruling Communists, at least in the short term, allowing them to characterize the opposition as would-be putschists who had attempted to overthrow the government. (An interesting timeline of foreign reactions to the post-election violence can be found here.) April 7th turned out to be the birthdate of a lot of myths - both in Moldova and among journalists and social media evangelists who were quick to seize on the overblown notion that the unrest in Chisinau could be characterized as a "Twitter Revolution" (this post puts a similar meme in its place in the context of Iran).

In Moldova, much of the June-July campaign centered around narratives of the events of April 7th, and the key difference between the campaign that ended on April 5th and campaign one ending today turned out to be the defection from the PCRM of Marian Lupu, the former parliamentary speaker whose name had been on the lips of many Western Moldova-watchers in March and early April as the best possible option to succeed Voronin. Lupu's role is yet to be determined - some from the opposition think he is part of a Communist plot to draw centrist votes (one of Lupu's campaign slogans has been "The political war must be stopped") and that upon making it into parliament, assuming his party and the Communists have enough votes to elect the president, he will make a deal with the PCRM and the three opposition parties who made it in in April will remain marginalized (in fact, one of them, Serafim Urechean's AMN, may not make it into parliament at all this time around).

Trash your TV, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Chisinau, June 7, 2009

A major first salvo in the information battle which characterized Moldova's second election campaign was kicked off when the government aired a "documentary" titled "Attack on Moldova" (Atac Asupra Moldovei) on NIT. In the best traditions of Russian propaganda films of recent years, this one-sided narrative featured alleged recordings of phone conversations and hinted at shadowy threats from abroad as well as fingering internal enemies - namely, the leaders of the opposition parties as well as jailed (and later released) businessman Gabriel Stati. This masterpiece can be viewed on YouTube (naturally) here. It led to at least one opposition party leader threatening legal action. Moldovan analyst Oleg Cristal projected in June that the film would be the "quintessence of this campaign," and he wasn't far off the mark. As Cristal wrote in late June:

I understand that this film is currently being shown all over the country, and it aims to provoke a reaction that is both emotional (blood, fire, screaming, shooting, chanting, etc.) and sentimental (fear, personal and group security, hatred, patriotism, love of country, etc.): "we are being attacked by external enemies (Romania and transnational crime groups) and internal enemies (the liberal opposition)."... "Attack on Moldova" rallies society around a common threat: "We must defend our Fatherland," urges Voronin.

"Attack on Moldova" kicked off what one interesting commentary referred to as the "Battle of the documentaries." The opposition decided to present its own versions of the events of April 7th and get its message out by screening its own "documentaries," both on YouTube and in some cases by screening them in the country's smaller towns where many voters do not have access to internet (or fast enough internet) to enable them to watch these online, or would not be inclined to do so. The main examples of these films were "Black Box," "Whither Moldova?", "Who Loves Moldova?", and the party-sponsored "The Truth About April 7th" (PL), "Green Eyes" (PLDM - whose party color is green) and "In Defense of Moldova" (AMN - see JurnalTV's report on this film, with highlights, here). Later in the campaign, Romania's TVR1 aired yet another "documentary" (I use the scare quotes throughout because, while some of these films may be relatively more or less objective, none of them is really a documentary), "The Trap," about the events of April 7th (some discussion of the film is here). This untitled opposition film may also be of interest.

One could hardly call the "Battle of the documentaries" a battle of equals - the ruling party by all accounts made full use of its "administrative resource," including its ability to broadcast and rebroadcast its propaganda films on nationwide television. The national news programs are also used to cast opposition politicians in the worst possible light. While I was in Chisinau, I saw several days of intense coverage of the city's stray-dog problem, all of it concluding that the city's mayor, liberal Dorin Chirtoaca, was at fault. I knew I was going native when I out-conspiracy-theoried even my post-Soviet friends and theorized that the PCRM had perhaps imported stray dogs from the rest of the country to give their mud-slinging increased credibility. Then the nightly news started to highlight alleged rat infestation in Chisinau, alleging that "the 'most European mayor in the city's history' has brought Chisinau to the verge of an epidemic."

Progressive Moldovans have found ways to compete with or combat the government's domination of broadcast TV, but most of these are internet-based and therefore problematic in terms of reaching rural voters. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning the nascent online TV channel JurnalTV, as well as a streaming video site called privesc.eu ("I watch," in Romanian), launched during the campaign, which has increased transparency by showing complete video of press conferences and public meetings of, for example, the Electoral Commission (and is currently streaming Moldova's main opposition-oriented TV station, ProTV), rather than the carefully edited versions which appear on state-run TV.

Another way of using the internet to deal with biased broadcast media is to take on the most egregious excesses directly - by publishing monitoring reports highlighting the bias of state-run news programs or by showing side by side how careful editing is used by the state-run programs to distort the messages of opposition politicians or foreign critics. In general - not surprisingly - the authorities have found it harder to control online media (though not for lack of trying) than conventional media, but this is cold comfort to the opposition given the internet's relatively limited reach in Moldova.

Fighting Fist, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, June 16, 2009.
You might assume the writing says "Fight with Communism," but in fact it says "Fight with Romanism"

YouTube provides a wealth of clips for those interested in how the campaign unfolded. While the major parties had video clips available on their websites, they all also had their video materials aggregated on YouTube:

PCRM
Partidul Liberal (PL)
Dorin Chirtoaca (separate from PL)
AMN (under the username scottgeorges for some reason)
Lupu (showing inter alia what seem to be dozens of clips of his meetings with voters in various cities throughout Moldova)

PLDM couldn't get their party's acronym as a username because it had already been nailed down by a YouTube channel called "Peace! Love! Deathmetal!" I couldn't find a one-stop source for their ads, but luckily the good people at ADEPT have set up a YouTube channel with campaign ads from all parties.

Online and traditional media which support the authorities also have made use of YouTube channels:

Moldnews, an online news portal which resembles Russian-funded efforts in Georgia
TV channel NIT

As have opposition-minded individuals and media:

Change Moldova
Unimedia
JurnalTV

For a somewhat more light-hearted YouTube clip, check out this animated spoof showing Voronin and several others (Greceanii, Turcan, Lupu, Rosca) conspiring to burn down the parliament. In general, the atmosphere of "permanent campaign" seemed to lead to fatigue and some silliness. A well-respected group of young, opposition-minded (though some used to work in the current gov't) economists called Clubul Idea started a something of a parody of the elections on its website - people create their own parties and then have the chance to vote for them.

Lupu, Chirtoaca and PLDM's Vlad Filat are on Facebook (note that Lupu is the only one of those three who has not tricked out his profile with a customized URL); Urechean is not, which makes sense given his target demo. They have been using the internet fairly extensively in general and their Facebook feeds in particular, as has Voronin adviser / PCRM parliamentarian / "grey cardinal" Mark Tkachuk, whose feed has reliably contained some of the black PR that is being pumped out by the PCRM campaign. Tkachuk (also spelled Tcaciuc) went all VVP with an "online news conference" on news portal Omega. Omega's unintentionally funny (to those familiar with Anglosphere netspeak) URL, OMG.md, stands for "Objective Media Group." They seem to be taking a page from Fox News' self-proclaimed "Fair & Balanced" stance, as this is an overtly pro-PCRM site.

Lupu joined Facebook fairly late in the game and received some scorn early on for making the noobie mistake of posting many, many videos as individual status updates, thus flooding the home pages of his "friends" and leading some people to exclude his feed from their home page. Sorry, I said I wouldn't get bogged down in the minutiae... To Lupu's credit, he did hold a meeting with Moldovan bloggers, video of which of course made its way online (PL leader Mihai Ghimpu also had a well-documented "off-line" meeting with Moldovan bloggers, as did Urechean). Lupu also, tellingly, has a standalone website (i.e., not one associated with the party he is using as a vehicle for his campaign, PDM) and has put a bunch of photos up on Flickr, including (somewhat oddly) items apparently intended to show that he is an international playa, e.g. an invitation from the French President to attend Bastille Day celebrations.

Tricolor, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, May 27, 2009.
Of course the pro-Romanian camp has its own cans of spray paint...

Another intriguing online innovation was the chance for voters in Chisinau to check their status on the election rolls online. Those lists which were the focal point of the fraud allegations which followed the April 5th balloting. Not sure how much it helped - Filat claimed (to the press and in a Facebook status update, naturally) to have found two extra people registered in his apartment when he went to vote this morning.

And what of the reverberations from the "Twitter Revolution"? Well, a few days before July 29th, I saw reports (initially on the Facebook feed of prolific Moldovan blogger and Twitterer extraordinaire Mihai Moscovici, later picked up by Unimedia) that fake Twitter accounts - nothing new, and apparently even non-celebrities are at risk - purporting to belong to Vlad Filat and Dorin Chirtoaca were calling for supporters to come protest on July 30th.

I can't think of an appropriate conclusion to this post and already have one foot out the door. I may come back later this evening with some more links and perhaps a report on whatever the scene is at the Moldovan Embassy in London. While I am not overly optimistic about what may follow this evening's vote-counting (which, as we all know, is much more important than the actual voting), permit me to conclude with a more uplifting - and probably apolitical - bit of street art:

Be United, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, June 17, 2009

Handicapping the Moldovan elections

How red will Moldovan voters go this time?
[Image: Poppies near Balti, Moldova, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.]

The world's eyes today are on Moldova. Well, OK, maybe not, but people are watching my favorite small country more than usual as its population goes to the polls in repeat parliamentary elections. What will the outcome be? Results from one of the more current public opinion polls (which is already out-of-date given the brevity of the repeat election campaign) can be found here.

Essential reading (the best analysis I've seen in English) is this post by Nicu Popescu; also check out RFE/RL's blog and this Romanian news-portal's ticker in English. In addition, Imedia, a Moldovan news analysis agency staffed by some real media professionals, is posting regular updates, and a member of the Moldovan diaspora in Bologna is liveblogging the voting at the consulate there.

There are a lot of other sources which I may include in a later post if I have time. For now, let's see what Reuters has to say about how things might turn out:

SCENARIOS: HOW MOLDOVA MIGHT EVOLVE AFTER WEDNESDAY'S VOTE
Reuters (UK) - July 28, 2009

Moldova votes in a parliamentary election on Wednesday to choose between Communists advocating a strategic partnership with Russia and liberal opposition parties seeking closer ties with the West.

Outgoing Communist President Vladimir Voronin called an early election last month after the legislature twice failed to endorse his handpicked successor as new president.

After a big communist win in the April 5 parliamentary election, the liberal opposition accused the authorities of vote-rigging. Crowds of mainly young people ransacked the parliament building and the president's office.

Here are some scenarios on how events in Moldova, Europe's poorest country, might unfold after the election.

WHAT POLLS FORECAST

In the 101-member chamber elected on April 5, the Communists held 60 seats, more than the 52 needed to elect the speaker and government, but one short of the number to elect a president.

Polls show a clear drop of support for the Communists, giving them about 30 percent compared to just under 50 percent in April, but a large share of undecided voters could produce a different result on Wednesday.

Two opposition parties, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats, are seen scoring a combined 20 percent. The Democratic Party, led by a Communist defector, has made big gains and could secure 10 percent, enough to win seats.

LANDSLIDE COMMUNIST VICTORY

If the Communists prove the polls wrong and receive 61 seats, they will be free to elect a government and president.

Relations with Russia would remain a priority and a Communist-inspired "strategic partnership" may bring about the disbursement of a $500 million loan promised by Moscow to help Moldova weather the global financial crisis.

Relations with Romania, linked to Moldova through a common language and history, would then remain poor, while ties with the European Union would probably develop, if slowly.

THE COMMUNISTS LOSE GROUND

Should the Communists win between 52 and 61 seats, they would be able to choose a government and speaker but remain unable to secure the election of a president to their liking.

They could form an alliance with the Democratic Party, under its new leader Marian Lupu, a Western-style intellectual who says such a deal will depend on Voronin quitting politics. Voronin wants to keep a hand on politics, like Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Such an alliance, under which the polyglot Lupu could become president, could produce good relations with both Russia and the European Union, as well as with Romania.

THE COMMUNISTS LOSE THE ELECTION OUTRIGHT

Should the Communists fare so badly that even an alliance with the Democratic Party proves impossible, pro-Western and pro-Romanian parties thrust into power could alter foreign policy dramatically.

Strong ties would be established with Romania and the EU and the new government would probably consider withdrawing from the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. But that would require time as Russia accounts for about half of Moldova's foreign trade and over 90 percent of energy imports.

The new authorities would also probably announce plans to join NATO, a move likely to jeopardise relations with Russia and which would be at odds with constitutional provisions for a neutral foreign policy.

A membership bid would also complicate attempts to resolve the 18-year-old separatist rebellion in the Transdniestria region, where Russia keeps a military contingent.

NO GROUP SECURES ENOUGH VOTES TO ELECT A PRESIDENT

If no grouping has enough votes to elect a new president, Voronin will continue as acting president until June 15, 2010 -- a year after dissolving the chamber.

STREET VIOLENCE?

Analysts differ on the prospects of new violent protests.

Some experts say the opposition, if it loses, will fear losing legitimacy in the eyes of the West by openly clashing with the authorities and opt instead for peaceful rallies. Any violent protests are likely to be spontaneous, but the Communists could try to blame unrest on their opponents. Communist-controlled media accused the opposition in the campaign of seeking support from Moldova's criminal underworld.

Battling Historical Narratives

Moldova in Myths and Legends, Chisinau, April 14.

I already pointed out how the government-run newspaper Moldova Suverana equated the protesters / rioters on April 7th with fascist Romanians retaking Chisinau in 1941. Now I have seen the flip side of this exaggeration of historical parallels, in a message sent around a few days ago by an opposition activist:

The Moldovan state authorities' violence against protesters is without precedent. Unlawful arrests, preventing access to a lawyer, torture, sexual abuse towards arrested young women are comparable only with the Soviet times in 1940s, when the country was militarily incorporated in the USSR along with the Baltic States.

Making Sense of Recent Events in Moldova

Wondering what happened, Chisinau, April 12.

The international community continues to digest the events of the past couple of weeks in Moldova. Statements from the UN can be found here and here, and Amnesty International has expressed its concern here and here (see here for AI Moldova's website and here for a more in-depth memo covering Amnesty's concerns), and offers you a chance to sign an online petition calling on the Moldovan authorities to protect detainees from human rights abuses here.

A webcast of an event held last week by the Moldova Foundation in DC entitled "Moldova's "Twitter Revolution" and Post-election Political Crisis" may also be worth watching, although I haven't had time to look at it yet.

Nicu Popescu had an op-ed in the FT on Friday (see full text here also) which does a good job of setting the context and makes things seem rather dire:

Just before Easter, as European diplomats were packing for the holidays, a crisis erupted in the forgotten and usually quiet Moldova that will require their intervention to sort out. Without a quick political solution, the European Union could face a new consolidated autocracy like Belarus on its border. Relations with Russia would deteriorate further and the launch of the eastern partnership initiative, under which the bloc aims to strengthen ties with six ex-Soviet states, would be undermined.

The trouble started two days after elections on April 5, which delivered a third straight victory to the Communist party. A minority of violent protesters broke into the parliament and the presidential palace, prompting the government to accuse Romania, an EU member state, of plotting a coup d'état in Moldova. More importantly, it also launched an indiscriminate crackdown on opposition parties, peaceful protesters and independent journalists. [...]

Russia quickly reacted to the crisis with political and practical support for the government's crackdown. President Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian foreign ministry have made numerous statements offering their backing to Vladimir Voronin, Moldova's president. For Russia, a more isolated Moldova is a more likely political ally.

The consequences of the crisis for the eastern partnership could be dire. Moldova is more dependent on the EU than any other eastern neighbour. More than 50 per cent of its trade is with the EU, the country receives significant EU assistance, most Moldovan emigrants work in the EU and almost three-quarters of Moldova's population support EU integration.

If the EU cannot influence Moldova, broader questions about its relevance in the eastern neighbourhood will emerge. The eastern partnership summit planned for early May could be a public relations disaster if it looks like the 27 EU heads of state are conferring legitimacy to a bunch of autocrats, killing the policy politically before it has been properly launched.

The long-term consequences of the crisis could be even more far-reaching. Moldova already has more than 100,000 Romanian citizens and Traian Basescu, Romania's president, has pledged to facilitate issuing passports. The EU faces the prospect of Moldova becoming a Russian political satellite with hundreds of thousands of EU citizens subject to a repressive regime. The EU has never faced such a dilemma. [...]

The genie of Moldovan authoritarianism is out of the bottle. Simple EU persuasion will not be enough to push it back. Huge international pressure forced even Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe to share power with the opposition in 2008. The job in Moldova might be much easier, but only if the EU cares enough to act.

Nicu has also written in recent days about the prospect of Moldova's isolation and the fact the Moldova now faces, in addition to the need to reunify with its breakaway region of Transdniestria, "the need for a second reintegration: the reintegration of a society divided by violence."

In addition, I wanted to highlight an op-ed piece run on Foreign Policy's website by Cristina Batog, who writes the following:

Because of [the opposition's] lack of cohesion and leadership, the protests have been doomed from the start, and the way events unfolded has only resulted in the tarnishing of everything the protesters stand for -- unification with Romania, the importance of a youth voice, and the ideal of democratic protest itself. Almost every election in Moldova has been accompanied by protests in Chisinau, typically initiated by young professionals and students. But this time, the protests quickly spun out of control. Whether you believe the opposition's argument that Moldovan security services and the communist government provoked the clash, or the government's argument that Romania manipulated the protesters, the results were counterproductive to say the least. Government buildings were vandalized, demonstrators clashed with police, and hundreds of protesters were beaten and arrested.

The opposition has the right idea politically, but the wrong idea tactically. Instead of taking to the streets, it should accept that it lost the elections fairly and should start creating a united force that can challenge the communists through democratic procedures and institutions. Likewise, the communist leadership fails to realize that it is fighting an uphill battle: The young people jailed in droves are the best and brightest of Moldovan society and will eventually become the republic's elite. Also, the Communist Party's anti-Romanian ideology is unsustainable and self-defeating in the long run. The communists should stop criminalizing pro-Romanian ideas and accept that Romanian history and language are an integral part of the Moldovan national identity.

Also worth reading are a couple of recent articles from Jamestown's Vlad Socor: "Moldovan Authorities Caught Unprepared by Violent Riots" and "Moldova's Body Politic in Gridlock After Elections and Riots."

The FT had an interesting piece quoting Speaker of Parliament and possible next President Marian Lupu admitting and apparently rationalizing human rights abuses committed by police in Chisinau:

Marian Lupu, speaker of Moldova’s parliament, said the amnesty from prosecution announced on Wednesday by Vladimir Voronin, Moldova’s president, must apply to protesters who contested the Communists’ election victory two weeks ago as well as to the police who beat them in holding cells.

“The president said there would be an amnesty for everybody involved,” he told the Financial Times. “Logically, if you forgive one side then you have to forgive the other side as well.” [...]

Mr Lupu said police had reacted emotionally to the injuries sustained by their colleagues. “They visited their colleagues in hospital, some 200 of them, and saw how badly injured they were.”

The FT is also on top of a very important developing story involving something that's been of interest to me for some time - Romania's citizenship policy with respect to Moldovans

I also highly recommend the ongoing English-language coverage - inter alia, of police (mis)treatment of detainees and of the potential for Moldova to develop in authoritarian direction - by Dumitru Minzarari.

Russian pundit Dmitry Babich also had a fairly interesting piece about recent events.

And if you read Russian, I highly recommend checking out the two-part post by Alexei Ghertescu, a young lawyer in Chisinau, in which he recounts his own experience of the events of April 7th. If I have time, I will translate his very interesting account of that fateful day.

As for my own thoughts about what happened in Chisinau, I am still trying to figure everything out, a task which hasn't been aided by the fact that one of my best friends from high school has been in London over the weekend for his first ever visit to the city.

I do know one thing. Today was the day when just about everyone (both Russian and Romanian Orthodox churches, as far as I know) in Moldova celebrates Easter. So I guess I can just wish everyone there a happy Easter and hope that the holiday brought at least a bit of a sense of peace to the country's people, who have experienced far too much fear in recent weeks.

Photos from Chisinau

Construction workers repairing the Presidential Palace on April 12 discard a damaged pane of glass

I have uploaded some of my photos from Chisinau to this set on Flickr. The set includes a number of photos from the opposition rally last Sunday the 12th and also some of the damage done to government buildings downtown. Nothing too special, but it's Chisinau the way I saw it on this trip.

I'm still trying to come up with a narrative on which to hang all of my interview notes, so if anyone's actually waiting with bated breath for that, I'm afraid you may have to wait another day. In the meantime, below is an absolute slew of articles sent around by the Moldova Foundation today - yes, I'm too lazy to do the clipping for you, dear readers, since it's already been done, albeit rather selectively. Click on the words "Read More..." below to, well, read more.

One thing I would note regarding a couple of the articles below that mention Natalia Morari and suggest she's either in some kind of detention or (quoting her) on the run, underground in Moldova (actually, on my last full day in Chisinau I heard a rumor she was hiding in Transdniestria!) - it's strange that neither of those articles points out that on her blog, her husband has posted a message stating that she is fine and at home in Chisinau under house arrest and is incommunicado due to being under some sort of gag order. Obviously it's not the gospel truth just because it's on her blog, but you'd think one of the journos would have looked it up and at least mentioned the contradiction between what Ms. Morari is saying to the Telegraph and what her husband is saying on LJ.

Oh, and one more article that's worth reading but didn't make the selection below is this NYT piece, which does as good a job as the newspaper article format allows of examining the thorny question of Moldovan national identity in light of last week's events.


LIBERALS, LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND OUR MOLDOVA REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN VOTE RE-COUNTING
Infotag (Moldova)
April 15, 2009

The three main opposition forces that have won seats in the next Parliament of Moldova – the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Moldova Noastra Alliance – have announced they will not have a finger in re-counting the ballots cast at the April 5 parliamentary elections in this republic.

MNA leader Serafim Urechean stated at a news conference in Infotag today that the vote re-counting, scheduled by the Central Election Commission for April 15 to last only one day, is “but a farce organized by the Communist Party… The Communists are undertaking an attempt to legitimize the April 5 voting returns that were rigged. We are checking voter registers, but shall not participate in the Wednesday’s ballot re-counting, the more so that nobody can say what has happened to the sacks with ballot-papers since the election day”.

Urechean expressed regret that the vote re-count will suspend the voter-register check work being carried out by the said opposition parties.

“We would like to draw your attention to one thing: the vote recount, initiated by the Communist Party, will be carried out by [over 20 thousand] members of electoral commissions all over the republic – certainly for the public means. And the opposition parties are examining voter registers all by themselves and on party money”, said Serafim Urechean.

Liberal Party Chairman Mihai Ghimpu voiced apprehension that new violations may be committed during the vote recounting tomorrow.

“We know that sacks with ballot-papers are stored somewhere in the Central Election Commission. We are not ruling out that a ballot substitution may be organized. As you all know, the Communists are now in a desperate quest for one parliamentary mandate, which they are, so far, missing for electing a new president independently”, said Mihai Ghimpu.

As Infotag has already reported, the re-counting idea was put forward by the Communist Party Chairman, President of Moldova Vladimir Voronin, and the Constitutional Court and the Central Election Commission have approved of such recount.

…DO NOT RECOGNIZE ELECTION OUTCOME, AND CALL FOR RERUN

Chisinau. The above-mentioned three main opposition parties will demand that the outcome of the April 5 parliamentary election be declared null and void, and will call for a new election, LDPM leader Vlad Filat stated at the news conference he held jointly with the leaders of the Liberal Party and the MNA.

"The opposition parties have gathered enough evidence that the election outcome was rigged," Filat said. "While checking electoral rolls we have found out that people who died many years ago participated in the election. Minors and people who have been working abroad for many years have also been included in election lists and subsequently cast their ballots”.

"He said that the opposition would in the near future present a joint report on the results of checking election lists.

"We will present the mechanism of falsification of election results and will show that some 400,000 additional people were included in election lists, and that 'dead souls', as well as minors and those who have gone abroad cast their ballots in the recent election," Filat said.

At the same time, the Liberal Party, the LDPM and the MNA expressed deep concern about the fate of young people arrested in the wake of the 6-7 protest rallies in Chisinau. The three parties asked for their unconditional release and pledged to bring evidence showing the real provocateurs behind the 7 April mass riots. The Liberal Party, the LDPM and the MNA also demanded access to the Teleradio-Moldova company but so far they have received no answer.

At the April 5 , the parties won together 41 out of 101 parliamentary seats. The other 60 seats were won by the ruling Communist Party.

* * *

DEMONSTRATIONS PROMPT MOLDOVAN RECOUNT
By Thomas Escritt, Financial Times (UK)
April 12 2009

Moldova’s Constitutional Court on Sunday agreed to stage a recount of last week’s election after thousands of people took to the streets to protest against alleged police brutality.

President Vladimir Voronin asked the court to consider a recount on the grounds that it could re-establish calm after the ransacking of Moldova’s parliament last week following claims that parliamentary elections were rigged in favour of the Communists.

Some 5,000 protesters gathered in Chisinau’s main square on Sunday, summoned by the strains of pop music that all but drowned out a choir singing to the Palm Sunday procession in front of the capital’s Orthodox cathedral.

Iurie Leanca, a former minister from the Liberal Democrat party, one of three opposition parties that contests the results of last Sunday’s elections, said: “The aim is to focus on the civil rights violations. Young people have been beaten in police stations ... Some parents still can’t find out where their children are.”

It emerged on Sunday that one protester had died in police custody. The interior ministry denied opposition claims that the man had been beaten and blamed the death on gas used for crowd control.

“The more they beat us, the stronger we become,” said Vlad Filat, Liberal Democrat chairman. “The more they violate our human rights, the stronger is our will to fight.”

The government says 252 people have been taken into custody since Tuesday, and 121 have been placed under house arrest. Charges have been filed against 286, while 17 minors were cautioned.

Ala Meleca, interior ministry spokesman, said claims of police brutality had not been investigated, since none had taken place.

A senior official in the prime minister’s office attacked the European Union’s “passivity” in the face of last week’s rioting.

“If Moldova turns into Belarus, it will be the EU’s fault,” the official told the Financial Times, drawing a parallel with the authoritarian former Soviet state that enjoys close relations with Moscow. The official also criticised the conciliatory tone of Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who last week labelled the storming of parliament “unacceptable” while stressing the importance of the right to peaceful protest.

Foreign observers signed off on the elections, in which the ruling Communist party won 49 per cent of the vote, but the opposition claims biased media coverage, ballot stuffing and travel restrictions skewed the outcome.

Peaceful protests turned violent last Tuesday, culminating in the storming of the parliament and presidency buildings in central Chisinau.

Communist party officials accuse the opposition of fomenting unrest with the aid of neighbouring country Romania.

Additional reporting by agencies in Chisinau

* * *

MOLDOVA STARTS RECOUNT AS OSCE SEES ABUSES
The Associated Press (US)
16 April 2009

Moldovan authorities began a recount Wednesday of votes cast in the country's disputed April 5 parliamentary elections, an official said.

Iurie Ciocan, a spokesman for the Central Election Committee, said results would be announced Friday. Initial results showed the Communist Party with about 50 percent of the vote.

In Vienna, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it had verified some claims that authorities abused demonstrators who protested the election results. The organization requested access to detention facilities and a meeting with a prosecutor.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek will also visit Chisinau on April 22 to assess the situation, the Moldovan president's office said Wednesday. The Czech Republic currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

Also Wednesday, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office said it would extradite two Moldovans suspected of organizing anti-government protests last week.

Gabriel Stati and Aurel Marinescu are being held in Odessa, where they were detained Thursday, said Yuriy Boichenko, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office. He said the two men might be handed over Thursday. Stati is the son of Anatol Stati, one of Moldova's richest men, whose investments in oil have contributed to his estimated wealth of $2.63 billion.

Chisinau's mayor Dorin Chirtoaca claimed Wednesday that a second person had died from beatings that he suffered in detention after the April 7 protests. Moldovan prosecutors said they would investigate the death of Ion Tibuleac, 22, who was buried Saturday.

* * *

U.N. CALLS FOR RESTRAINT, PEACEFUL DISSENT
UPI (USA)
April 14, 2009


The United Nations has called on security authorities in Moldova to show restraint following an outbreak of violence in recent protests.

U.N. officials in Moldova echoed a call Monday from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for police to maintain order but show restraint from taking actions that might provoke more violence.

Following Moldova's parliamentary elections on April 5, young protesters took to the streets of the country's capital, Chisinau. The protests turned violent and prompted a call from the United Nations for protesters to dissent peacefully, the United Nations reported.

Ban called on leaders in Moldova to resolve differences through constructive dialogue in order to avoid ongoing unrest.

"Citizens must exercise their rights in a peaceful manner, and for their part, authorities must exercise restraint in policing demonstrations and guarantee fundamental human rights, including the right to physical and psychological integrity and the right to freedom of opinion, expression, association and assembly," the U.N. news release said.

* * *

MOLDOVA DETAINEES ABUSED, SAYS UN OFFICIAL
By Thomas Escritt, Financial Times (UK)
April 14 2009

Hundreds of young people detained after anti-government protests in Moldova have been subjected to "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment and denied access to legal advice, a United Nations official says.

Detainees described being beaten with clubs, water bottles, fists and feet, according to a confidential report that includes evidence provided by the UN human rights adviser in the country and seen by the Financial times.

The report says there is abundant evidence prisoners were being held in inhumane conditions with 25 to 28 individuals in 8m-square cells, denied food and given only limited access to water and basic sanitary facilities.

Hundreds of young people in Chisinau were arrested last week after protests against the outcome of elections 10 days ago turned violent when a group of protesters stormed the parliament and presidency buildings, setting the former ablaze. The protesters claim the Communist party, which won 49 per cent of the vote, stole the election.

The government declined to comment on the report, but referred to an earlier statement by the interior ministry that there would be no investigation into police brutality since no such cases had taken place.

Edwin Berry, the UN human rights adviser, said he had not written the report but confirmed it was based on evidence he gathered during a prison visit made on Saturday. "I did see evidence of acts of cruel and unusual punishment," he said.

The report is based on a visit to a single detention centre. A delegation consisting of Mr Berry and representatives of the country's National Preventative Mechanism on Torture, an officially sanctioned group of human rights organisations, was denied access to two other jails, in spite of legislation that allows them to conduct unannounced visits to any detention centre.

The report says detainees were "brought before a judge in blocks of six" and "collectively charged . . . [by means of] a template document. At no time did [the] detainees have access to a legal council".

Moldova's Constitutional Court on Sunday agreed to stage a recount of last week's election after thousands of people took to the streets to protest against alleged police brutality and mass arrests.

The recount takes place on Wednesday.

The communists, who are popular with older people and the many Slavic-speakers marooned in the former Soviet Republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union, have presided over eight years of strong growth in Moldova, a country of 4.4m sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine.

The communist president, Vladimir Voronin, has said last week's violence formed part of a Romanian-backed attempted "coup" and he has questioned the loyalty of the many Moldovans who hold dual Romanian citizenship.

* * *

MOLDOVA EXPELLING AMERICAN HEAD OF NDI OFFICE
Interfax (Russia)
Apr 15, 2009

A Chisinau court ordered on Wednesday that American Alex Grigorjevs, resident director of the Moldovan office of the U.S. National Democratic Institute, be expelled
from Moldova, his lawyer Costal Tense said.

On Tuesday, two Moldovan policemen arrested Grigorjevs at his office in central Chisinau and took him to court, Tanase told Interfax.

"After a personal identification procedure, he was handed a summons to court for Wednesday. On Wednesday, the court ruled that Alex Grigorjevs must leave Moldovan territory as he has been in the country without permission," Tanase said.

The lawyer confirmed that Grigorjevs' permit for residence in Moldova expired in September 2008.

"However, in August he asked for his residence permit to be extended. The authorities did not respond. He advised the Moldovan foreign minister, Andrei Stratan, about this, and Stratan confirmed that everything would be all right," Tanase said.

The lawyer said he would appeal the ruling.

Grigorjevs has been posted on Moldova since the NDI's Moldovan office opened in 2004.


* * *

EU ACCUSED OF TURNING BLIND EYE OVER MOLDOVA
By Thomas Escritt, Financial Times (UK)
April 15 2009

Vlad Filat, leader of one of three parties that are challenging the results of Moldova’s parliamentary elections has accused the European Union of turning a blind eye to mounting evidence of human rights abuses in the country.

Concern is growing for Natalia Morari, the Russian journalist who organised last Tuesday’s protest using social networking sites and SMS texts. Ms Morar, who has been in hiding, was reported arrested on Tuesday. “I’m in a holding cell going to court in 45 minutes,” she told the Financial Times by text message. Her whereabouts are not now known.

Mr Filat, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat party, said the European Union’s response to mass arrests of opposition protesters in the wake of the elections had been inadequate.

“We understand that there are geopolitical realities and that they have to engage with Voronin [Moldova’s Communist president], but the serious human rights abuses we have seen over the past 10 days are more urgent,” he told the Financial Times in an interview.

The accusation came ahead of the electoral commission’s announcement on Wednesday evening of the results of a vote recount which opposition parties dismiss as a tactical feint by the Communists.

The opposition says electoral rolls were padded out with the names of the dead and people who left Moldova long ago. Attempts to vet the electoral rolls were halted by a court decision on Tuesday evening.

Moldova’s ruling Communist party won 49 per cent of the vote on April 5 in an election opposition parties say was stolen.

Peaceful student protests that began on Tuesday rapidly descended into violence when an apparently small and unrelated group stormed the parliament and presidency buildings, setting the former ablaze. The government admits some 300 protesters have since been arrested, but the opposition claims more than 1,000 are in jail.

Mr Filat said concern about driving Moldova’s government closer to Russia was overshadowing concern for the detainees, many of whom have been beaten, according to a UN report.

“There are politicians who are concerned about values and rights and politicians who care about strategy and geopolitics in Brussels. But how can US and EU politicians talk about geopolitics when their policies are based on very different values,” Mr Filat said.

Statements from Brussels so far have condemned last Tuesday’s violence. “The important thing is to get the political process back on track,” an EU official in Chisinau told the Financial Times.

Moldova is divided between speakers of Moldovan, a variant of Romanian, and Slavic-speakers, many of whom were marooned in the former Soviet republic of 4.4m after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mr Voronin, a former Soviet general, maintained good relations with Moscow until a split over the future of the breakaway province of Transdnistria in 2005. The opposition parties, which are supported by Moldovan speakers, say the Communists’ commitment to European integration is only rhetorical.

* * *

ROMANIA TO TAKE SITUATION IN R. MOLDOVA TO ECHR, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
Financiarul (Romania)
April 16, 2009

Romania will address the ECHR with respect to limiting the right to the free movement of the Romanian citizens in the Republic of Moldova and it will also call on the European Parliament for an inquiry, President Traian Basescu told the public television TVR late on Tuesday.

'You can be sure there was no joke in the speech I delivered (to the Parliament - editor's note) when I said we'll notify the international courts. The restriction of the right to the free movement of the Romanian citizens, the violation of the agreement between the EU and Moldova will be one of the topics we'll put forward to the ECHR.

The Romanian citizens were deprived of a right they had, the Romanian citizens were searched, the Romanian journalists were deprived of the right to do their job', Basescu stressed.

He said Romania will notify the ECHR with respect to the Moldovan authorities' attitude towards the Romanian journalists, since 'what happened to the Romanian journalists in the Republic of Moldova - they were arrested, detained, searched, some were denied entry to the Republic of Moldova - are things we are going to present the ECHR'.

The president also said Romania was likely to ask for an inquiry by the European Parliament. 'Maybe it is too early and not too political to speak of the second move we plan to make. We want a European inquiry by the European Parliament, where the foreign policy commission or the plenary sitting can make such a decision. We are trying to carry out both alternatives and I hope tomorrow I'll manage to hold the exploratory talks', he added.

Basescu pointed out the main goal of Romania is that the abuse be found against the Romanian citizens or those who have double citizenship; the issue in Chisinau is to certify the seats of the parliamentarians who have double citizenship - Romanian and Moldovan, he underscored.

'This is another reason why we'll go to the ECHR. The Romanian citizenship is not a second rate citizenship. It is European citizenship. The citizens who have such citizenship should not be discriminated', he said.

Basescu added there is not yet a full evaluation of what is going on in the neighbouring country.'
At that meeting to which I invited the foreign minister and the prime minister, the day after the Chisinau events, one of the things we established as being a priority was that we be informed about how many citizens who have Romanian citizenship are there in the jails of the Interior Ministry in Chisinau. Not even today have we got an answer from the Chisinau authorities', Basescu said.

The president stressed that Romania's attitude towards the Republic of Moldova was temperate in the past as well, when two clerics and two diplomats had been expelled.

'There are attitudes and actions of the Chisinau Government to which we did not respond. It takes the acceptance of both sides to build a curtain. Can you image how things would have got complicated if we had matched our answer and had expelled the Moldovan ambassador, if we had introduced a visa tax for the Moldovan citizens seeking to come to Romania', Basescu said.

* * *

ROMANIA SLAMS VORONIN ATTEMPT TO RAISE ‘IRON CURTAIN’
By Mihai Barbu, Nine o'Clock (Romania)
April 15, 2009

Romania will not give R. of Moldova President Vladimir Voronin the opportunity to raise an iron curtain over Prut River, President Traian Basescu said on Monday evening after a meeting at Cotroceni Palace with education trade unionists.

“He himself can decide or try to raise an iron curtain over Prut River. We will not give him the opportunity to do this, because we will have a European behaviour, a responsible behaviour, not to President Voronin, but to the four million Romanians who live in Moldova, the four million Romanians, citizens of the Republic of Moldova, who are part of this people,” Basescu said.

He added that he kept silent over the topic so far, in spite of opposition parties’ criticism, because he wanted to have an overall view of what happened in the R. of Moldova. “I thought that giving a rushed response to President Voronin was exactly the kind of game he wanted to draw us in,” he said.

Basescu refused to make further comments, saying he would address all issues related to the Moldova events and the “ungrounded accusations Chisinau authorities, including Voronin, brought against Romania,” in his Parliament address.

Chisinau last week was gripped by violent protests against the ruling Communist Party’s victory in the legislative elections. One person was killed, dozens were injured and over 200 were arrested following a day of clashes between demonstrators and police, in which protesters stormed the parliament building and President Voronin’s offices. The opposition insisted that the legislative elections, which were won by the Communists, were rigged and asked for a repeat of the ballot.

Voronin directly accused Romania of being behind the protests and immediately moved to expel the Romanian ambassador to Moldova and to introduce visas for Romanians. Romania rejected the allegations as “provocation”, but underlined that it will not take similar measures against Moldovan diplomatic personnel in Bucharest.

Geoana: Romania must redefine its position in Moldova ties

Meanwhile yesterday, during a debate on the Moldova events, Senate Speaker Mircea Geoana underlined that Romania should redefine its position in the current international context and in its ties with the Republic of Moldova. Geoana said Romania is somehow isolated in the EU and underlined that this is proven by the weak response of European states to anti-Romanian attitudes in Chisinau.

“The neighbour we have the best ties with at the moment is the Black Sea. We have an obligation to the Republic of Moldova and it is high time we redefine our position to these events,” Geoana said. He added that Romania is facing difficult ties with both Moldova and Russia at the moment.

Geoana also said that both at Brussels and Washington, there is low interest in regional developments, not only in R. of Moldova, but also in Ukraine and Georgia, which are also facing a difficult period.

The debate was also attended by FM Cristian Diaconescu, the head of the Social-Democrat Party’s National Council, Adrian Nastase, the head of the Senate’s foreign affairs committee, Titus Corlatean and several politicians, analysts and NGO representatives.

Nastase, a former foreign minister and prime minister, criticized President Basescu for the current ‘poor state’ of Romania’s foreign policy and said he expected the head of state’s Parliament address, scheduled later on Tuesday evening, to be an “image exercise, some sort of hysteric circus”.

A similar opinion was voiced by ex President Emil Constantinescu, who said in an interview to RFI that Romania’s neighboring policies have failed and that Basescu’s speech in Parliament would only be meant to impress the public. “In my opinion, the president doesn’t know what to do, neither he nor the government has any kind of strategy” regarding Moldova, he said. In an earlier statement, Constantinescu protested the “repressive and illegitimate” actions taken by Moldovan authorities to repress opposition demonstrations and called on Amnesty International, the Council of Europe and the OSCE to intervene. Also yesterday, Chamber of Deputies Speaker Roberta Anastase said she decided to sent a letter to her EU counterparts, to draw attention on the events in Chisinau, which “proved the undemocratic nature” of Voronin’s rule. Anastase voiced deep concern over the actions of the Moldovan government and the country’s democratic perspectives.

She also criticized the authorities’ “brutal and abusive” actions against demonstrators and the measures taken against foreign journalists. Her comments came as on Monday evening, a spokesperson for the PSD, Cristian Dumitrescu, said his party was going to ask the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations to dispatch missions to R. of Moldova so as to clarify all allegations of human rights violations.

Tension still high in Moldova

The three largest opposition parties in Moldova – the Liberal Democrats, the Liberals and Our Moldova Alliance, yesterday demanded that the April 5 polls be cancelled and new elections be held, saying they have enough evidence to prove that the elections were rigged. “We checked the lists of voters and found that several people who died years ago or who have been living abroad for a long time were on these lists,” the head of Liberal-Democrats, Vlad Filat said.

The votes will be recounted today, at the request of President Voronin. Opposition parties charge that Voronin hopes the communists will obtain one more seat in Parliament after a recount, so as to be able to impose the next president.

Meanwhile, allegations of abuse and violence against people detained following last week’s protests continued. The family of a young man who was arrested and beaten up by police agents said they were going to sue the Chisinau police, while the head of the Moldovan Center for Human Rights said that three children, who were also detained, without their parents’ knowledge, were “put under a lot of pressure.”

Chisinau Mayor and Liberal leader Dorin Chirtoaca said that the Moldovan police are trying to hide the ‘ill treatment’ detainees were subjected to, by moving them from Chisinau to other police offices across the country or to unknown locations.

In an online discussion with HotNews readers, Chirtoaca said those who commit these severe acts against citizens should be tried for crimes against humanity at The Hague.

On Monday evening, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry withdrew the accreditation of a correspondent of the Romanian public television to Chisinau. The decision was heavily criticized by the Romanian public TV channel.

* * *

MOLDOVAN OPPOSITION TO BOYCOTT RECOUNT, CALLS FOR NEW VOTE
AFP (France)
April 14, 2009

Leaders of Moldova's main opposition parties said Tuesday they would boycott a recount of disputed legislative elections, calling it a sham and demanding a new vote.

"The recount is a farce which the Communists thought up in order to legalize violations that occurred during the election," Serafim [Urechian], head of the Our Moldova party, told reporters.

"The opposition will not participate in the recount," he added, speaking at a joint press conference with leaders of two other opposition parties.

The leaders of Our Moldova, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democratic Party called instead for a repeat of the disputed April 5 election in Moldova, an impoverished former Soviet republic wedged between Ukraine and Romania.

This week, elections officials said they would conduct the recount Wednesday and finish it in one day, while Moldova's Communist President Vladimir Voronin said the recount would restore stability.

Together the three opposition parties won about 35% of the vote, compared to about 50% won by the Communists, official results showed.

But allegations that the Communist Party had falsified the vote sparked street demonstrations last week, including one in which young protesters stormed and ransacked parliament.

The opposition says that voter lists included dead people and Moldovans working abroad.

* * *

MOLDOVA PRESIDENT CALLS FOR AMNESTY FOR PROTESTERS
Reuters (USA)
April 15, 2009

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin urged legal authorities today to proclaim an amnesty for people detained while taking part in anti-communist demonstrations, except for criminals and repeat offenders.

''I call on the competent bodies to carry out a general amnesty and call for an end to all forms of prosecution against participants in street protests,'' Voronin said in comments broadcast before a televised address to the nation.

''Representatives of the criminal world and repeat offenders must remain in prison.'' About 200 people were detained after violent protests last week against alleged vote rigging in an election won by the Communists, and international groups have since accused the authorities in the ex-Soviet state of mistreating detainees.
---------
OUT NOTE: reports from the ground say that today, April 16, no one was released from the police custody.

* * *

LEADER OF MOLDOVA'S 'TWITTER REVOLUTION' IN HIDING
Telegraph (UK)
April 16, 2009

A woman who helped organise the protests that rocked Moldova last week has gone into hiding after the "Twitter revolution" forced a recount of the general election.

Natalia Morar, 25, was behind a flash mob that ended with 20,000 people storming the parliament building in the country's captial Chisinau.

She now fears she will be arrested for her role in the unrest, which left parliament buildings damaged.

Miss Morar, told the Guardian she had not slept for two nights and was moving from one apartment to the next in an attempt to outwit the authorities.

Reports said police had ordered she be placed under house arrest.

"They have staked out my house and my mother's," she told the paper, speaking from a secret location.

"They entered my apartment without a search warrant. If they find me they will arrest me – and what happens then, no one knows. I haven't spoken on the phone or gone online for two days for fear of being traced."

The protests began after a conversation between Morar and six friends in a cafe in Chisinau on April 6.

"We discussed what we should do about the previous day's parliamentary elections, which we were sure had been rigged," she said.

The elections brought a larger-than-expected victory for the incumbent Communist party.

"We decided to organise a flash mob for the same day using Twitter, as well as networking sites and SMS."

With no recent history of mass protests in Moldova, "we expected at the most a couple of hundred friends, friends of friends, and colleagues", she said.

"When we went to the square, there were 20,000 people waiting there. It was unbelievable."

On Tuesday, the demonstrations continued into peacefully. But later that day protesters stormed the parliament building and the presidential palace opposite. Fire broke out in one wing of the parliament, and the young protesters damaged computers and office furniture.

"Not only did we underestimate the power of Twitter and the internet, we also underestimated the explosive anger among young people at the government's policies and electoral fraud," she said.

Miss Morar, who is banned from Russia for opposing the Kremlin, believes Moldova's powerful neighbour was involved in the vendetta against her: "It was when Russia expressed strong support for Moldova's position on the elections, and condemned the protests, that they started targeting us."

The results of the recount will be announced on Friday.

* * *

TWO MOLDOVAN SUSPECTS OF ORGANIZING CHISINAU RIOTS EXTRADITED FROM UKRAINE
Kyiv Post (Ukraine)
April 16, 2009

Moldovan citizens Gabriel Stati and Auren Marinescu suspected of funding the Chisinau riots have been extradited from Ukraine, Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksandr Shynalsky told Interfax-Ukraine.

"They are already in Moldova," he said.

Stati and Marinescu were seized in Odesa on April 9. Moldovan police wanted them "for actions aimed to seize power in violation of the Moldovan constitution". The riots in Chisinau occurred on April 6-7.

* * *


MOLDOVAN CAPITAL’S MAYOR SPEAKS AGAINST COMMUNISM
By ELLEN BARRY, New York Times (USA)
April 13, 2009

The 30-year-old mayor of Chisinau, Dorin Chirtoaca, told a crowd of around 3,000 in the city’s central square on Sunday that Moldova’s youth had rejected Communism because they “understand that their future has been stolen.”

Last week, after anti-Communist rallies culminated in a violent raid of government buildings in Moldova, authorities arrested hundreds of participants and cracked down on high school and college classrooms across the country. Those who gathered on Sunday were mostly in their 40s and 50s, many carrying candles from morning church services.

During last week’s demonstrations, “the young people threw out portraits of Voronin and Lenin and others because they have come to hate them,” Mr. Chirtoaca said to shouts of applause, referring to Moldova’s 67-year-old Soviet-educated president, Vladimir Voronin. “They understand that their future has been stolen. They understand that their votes in the parliamentary elections were stolen. Regimes that use terror end badly.”

Mr. Chirtoaca, elected two years ago on an anti-Communist platform, called for a moment of silence in memory of Valeriu Boboc, 23, who died Wednesday after participating in demonstrations on Tuesday. His parents have said that his death was caused by a beating at the hands of the police.

Moldova’s Interior Ministry released a statement on Sunday saying an autopsy showed that Mr. Boboc had a broken rib, but that his death had not been caused by the injury. “Doctors think that the young man was poisoned by unknown substances,” the statement said, according to Interfax. “Prosecutors are ready for an international probe in order to exclude other interpretations of this fact.”

Meanwhile, Moldova’s Constitutional Court on Sunday authorized a recount of the results from the April 5 parliamentary elections, as well as a verification of voter lists, allotting nine days for its completion. Preliminary results released April 5 showed Communists getting about 50 percent of the vote, which would give them enough leverage to select the next president unilaterally — a bitter disappointment to young people eager to shake off Communist rule. The results set off large anti-Communist protests last Monday and Tuesday.

The crowd that gathered on Sunday was striking for its absence of students, who have been severely sanctioned for participating in the actions last week. Aurelia Pospai, 62, a university instructor, said the state Ministry of Education on Wednesday ordered faculty members to sign a document promising to prevent their students from participating in rallies. She said she hoped to send a message that the protest movement was not confined to the young.

“Since 1984, we were fighting against Communism,” she said. “And now we have fallen back into it with this regime. We want them out even more than the young people do.”

* * *

MOLDOVAN GENERATION GAP STOKES POLITICAL FEUDS
By MANSUR MIROVALEV, AP (USA)
April 12, 2009

With one-quarter of the population working abroad to eke out a living, impoverished Moldova has become a country of the young and the very old.

It's a generation gap that has split the country politically — and violently.

The elderly, who look to Moscow for leadership and are nostalgic for the Soviet past, recently voted to return Communists to power. The young, rallied by text messages and Twitter and eager to join Europe, seized and trashed parliament and the country's presidential offices in response.

The unrest continued Sunday, as 3,000 anti-government protesters gathered in downtown Chisinau to call for the government to resign.

Some Moldovans say the absence of working-age adults, less embittered than the old and more practical than the young, is to blame for turning the parliamentary contest into a clash of generations.

Ion Covali, a 61-year-old retired trucker, voted for the victorious Communists because he believes capitalism has only brought his once-proud country poverty and humiliation — a point driven home by the world economic crisis.

"We used to be a magnet, everyone in the Soviet Union envied us," Covali said, as wrinkles on his face smoothed into a frail smile. "But now we live in a dump."

Covali's grandson, 19-year-old Ion Covali, was among thousands of youths who took to the streets after the April 5 vote. Demonstrators alleged widespread voting fraud and called for new elections.

For the younger Ion, who didn't bother to vote, the protests were exhilarating. "Everything was so unexpected," the university student said. "And everyone was high on this sudden freedom."

Nina Bondarenko, a 60-year old schoolteacher, said Moldova's elderly — who built their lives during the Soviet era — still cling to the myths of Communism. "Soviet children were drilled into believing white was black and vise versa, and they have become ... today's pensioners," she said.

The younger generation, she said, are free to think for themselves. But the country's youth have grown up without parental supervision, leaving them feeling both bold and abandoned, Bondarenko said.

"The schools are filled with children whose parents are abroad, and many children protest it any way they can," she said.

Wednesday's protests, among the largest Moldova has seen since March 2002, ended with 193 people arrested and almost 100 injured.

Sergei Roscovanu, a taxi driver who recently returned from working in Ireland, is neither a student nor a pensioner. The 25-year-old said he didn't know whether to blame the protesters or the Communists for the unrest.

He is certain of one thing: Moldovan society has suffered because so many live abroad. "We have been bled dry by the exodus," said Roscovanu.

The 1991 Soviet collapse transformed Moldova into one of the poorest countries in Europe. Up to a fourth of the population of 4 million work in the European Union or Russia and their remittances amounted to almost 40 per cent of Moldova's GDP, according to the World Bank.

"There is a growing conflict between grandparents and grandchildren," said Anatoly Petrenko of the opposition group European Action.

The elections left the Communists with 60 out of 101 seats in parliament, one short of being able to name a replacement for President Vladimir Voronin, who in 2001 became Europe's first democratically elected communist head of state.

On Friday Voronin, who is stepping down after two terms, ordered a re-count of votes calling for a resolution of Moldova's "political dead-end."

While older Moldovans tend to regard Russia as their country's chief ally, many youth look west to Europe and neighboring Romania, which shares close linguistic, ethnic and historical ties with Moldova. Many protesters called for unification with Romania, a member of the European Union and NATO.

Voronin, meanwhile, has accused Romanian authorities of supporting the violent protests and of helping the opposition organize the revolt.

Older Moldovans like to reminisce about the days when Moldova was a jewel in the crown of the Soviet Union. The tiny republic had thriving agriculture, and Covali recalls driving trucks loaded with Moldovan fruit, vine and cigarettes to central Russia and Siberia.

After the 1991 Soviet collapse, the world turned upside down for the pensioner's generation. Sitting at an oak dinner table at his crammed apartment in the capital, Chisinau, Covali pointed at the pictures of his two sons, Corneliu and Marius, who work at a fish cannery in Portugal to support their families.

Now the world's economic downturn, he said, threatens even this tenuous economic lifeline.

"I voted for Communists because they promise stability amid this capitalist crisis," Covali said. "They are far from perfect, but they are better than these opposition crybabies that squabble between themselves instead of serving the people."

Young Moldovans, meanwhile, live in a world of electronic gadgets and computers, swiftly changing fashion trends and multicultural influences.

Many have traveled or worked abroad and resent that their impoverished country is ruled by the aged elite that seeks closer ties with Russia and still calls itself Communist.

Communism is unfashionable among youth here. "It's just a brand for the old people," sneered Roman Lobov, a 22-year old university student with closely cropped hair.

If anything, the recent protests may have aggravated Moldova's yawning generation gap.

"The revolt only boosted communists' ratings," said Svetlana, a middle-aged saleswoman at a bookstore in central Chisinau, who refused to provide her last name, saying she fears pressure from nationalists.

"Many of my friends were indifferent to voting, but after what happened they said they will vote for Voronin," she said.

Of course, not all of the young supported the protests. Neither do all elderly Moldovans back the Communists.

But prospects for a reconciliation of Moldova's divided generations appear slim in the short run, said young Ion Covali, wearing a black coat and white-blue jeans.

He was standing outside a movie theater with a marquee advertising both Hollywood and Russian blockbusters, another symptom of his country's split between East and West.

"We need changes so much," he said, "but sometimes I think they will come only after the older generation is gone."