[source for both - unimedia.info]In addition, Unimedia's blow-by-blow account of events gives us the following quotes (translated by a non-native English speaker, apparently) from opposition figures:
Vlad Filat, president of Liberal Democrat Party: "The Communists want to put the accent from fake elections to violent actions, because the police, which was in a small number at the protest, could not assure the public order."
Dorin Chirtoacă, vice-president of the Liberal Party says that there were provocateurs among the young people that have thrown first with stones and made that a peaceful action become violence.
It has been quite a day - and apparently quite an evening - in Chisinau.
drugoi posted this photo by Reuters photog Gleb Garanich of a young protester apparently after looting some high-tech gear from the Parliament building.
It's interesting to follow reactions from around the Internet. One website from Moldova's secessionist region, Transnistria, has a post up in which the author talks about the "indescribable sense of pleasure and schaudenfreude" he experienced while watching the rather tragic events of Tuesday unfold in Chisinau. A couple of commenters on the post have taken the author to task for such sentiments, but in general its not surprising that folks in Transnistria, which has for many years existed in de facto separation from Moldova, would have different impressions of the events in Chisinau, especially as the nationalistic overtones of some of the Moldovan protesters reinforce one of the reasons that Transnistria initially sought to split from Moldova. The condescension of Transnistrians regarding their right-bank (de jure) compatriots, though, is a bit too much at times - witness this post dubbing today's events the "Mamaliga Revolution," after the polenta-like Moldovan national dish.
A commenter on sholademi's LJ blog this evening reported peaceful demonstrations in the largest city in Moldova's north, Balti, and noted that there were a lot of police in the streets and that "land line phones are not working, nor is [local] TV - we're watching the Romanian channels."
Georgian blogger cyxymu posts a set of Reuters photos and adds the sympathetic title, "I wouldn't wish this even on an enemy."
Blogger Julien Frisch has a post about the protests with a number of links to coverage from around the web.
Yandex's Russian-language blog aggregator now has a dedicated page titled "'Color Revolution' in Moldova," collecting on-topic posts. I haven't read too many of the reactions from the Russian blogosphere, but it's fair to assume that a substantial percentage will fall back on negative opinions of "color revolutions" formed during the events in Ukraine and Georgia years ago.
I've taken a bit of time to translate one last nugget I found on the web - a comment on one of Natalia Morari's posts about the protests - because I think it articulates what many older and more level-headed (or perhaps passive) Moldovans might have thought about the election results and protests initially [ellipsis as in original]:
...so who voted for the Communists? A bunch of grandmas and old ladies...and? Riiiiight, lots of our parents... if the people who are now shouting out in the main square could have convinced their parents not to vote for the Communists, then maybe they wouldn't have won?
But this raises two questions:
1) Who should they have voted for?
2) How can they be convinced otherwise? Yesterday I was talking with my mother, she is retired and receives a pension, just like my father... but he still goes to work, he teaches at a university, so he's a state employee... anyway, I asked her, "Why did you vote for the Communists?"
She answered, "They increased my pension."
I told her, that this was at the expense of the youth, and let's imagine that she told me she didn't care, her own children are overseas and she's in Moldova, she has to think about herself.
"In years past part of our heating bill was paid by the city government, but now Chirtoaca [a prominent opposition politician and Mayor of Chisinau] fell out with the heating utility company, and we have to pay the whole amount."
Even though I know that the Communists were also involved in this conflict, it's hard to argue with the much higher heating bills...
"Before the Communists came to power I was afraid to go outside, but now things are stable in the country, there is less crime..."
I have to agree with this, although I can't say I'd let my kids outside alone even now...
"A bunch of other reasons..."
And it's not so important why they voted for the Communists, what matters is that no one was able to convince them otherwise and no one gave them another worthy choice instead...
And now, when parents see their children out on the square, they will be even more firmly on the side of the Communists, I won't bother to write why, it's obvious...
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