Fact-checking

Soviet-era sign warning of high voltage, the literal translation of
which is "Under Pressure / Danger to Life." Chisinau, April 13.

Since I got back from Chisinau, I've tried to catch up on all of the online and other coverage of events there which I missed while running around the city. As it turns out, some of the stories which have appeared contain substantial errors of fact or interpretation. Below are two such articles.

First is an article in OpenDemocracy, the headline of which informs readers that it's "Time to Take Sides" in Moldova, an exhortation which should give one pause immediately. Sure enough, the article contains at least one profound factual error:

...Moldova's long-serving leader has survived the challenges faced by his post-cold-war counterparts in east-central Europe in the early 1990s to be repeatedly re-elected in essentially non-contested elections and become the incarnation of the status quo. The official results of the 5 April election continued the pattern...

Voronin was not "repeatedly re-elected" (actually, the way the system works, his post is selected by the Parliament, but I guess one shouldn't be too literal): he was elected once in 2001, in contested elections regarded as free and fair, and he was re-elected once in 2005, in elections which were also a legitimate victory. The problem is not that there has been some sort of "pattern"; quite the opposite. The problem is that the pattern of Moldovan democracy - multiple peaceful transfers of power via the ballot box, a record of which no other CIS country can boast - has been dealt a serious blow.

Perhaps it would be better if journalists and commentators simply referred to Voronin's party as the PCRM. It might allow people who still go all wild-eyed at any mention of the C-word to develop a reasonable opinion about the Moldovan political scene. In its actual policies and attitudes, the PCRM has been about as Communist as Putin's United Russia.

Next up is a piece by the Guardian's Jonathan Steele, which essentially makes the very reasonable point that, were Moldova better off economically, people likely wouldn't have taken to the streets to protest what Steele seems to regard as minor irregularities in the voting.

Opposition parties deplore last week's violence - they claim it was started by pro-communist provocateurs. But why would the government, having just won elections, want to stoke unrest?

There is one obvious answer to this question: the level of violence involved in the protests allows the PCRM to discredit the Moldovan opposition in the eyes of Moldovan voters, and therefore secures the PCRM's position as the unchallenged master of the political scene. Given the level of accusations leveled at the Communist leadership involving personal enrichment (accusations not dispelled by the awarding of the roughly $27 million contract to repair the destroyed government buildings to Glorinal, a construction company owned by the President's son, Oleg Voronin), and the attendant diminished sense of legitimacy surrounding the PCRM's rule, it is clear that the ruling party may have some reason to fear ending up in the minority.

Moreover, the violence in Chisinau could have been orchestrated to allow the PCRM to assume a tighter grip on power in anticipation of the global economic crisis arriving in Moldova in full force, which many observers expect to happen in coming months. I mention these possible rationales merely to show that one should not incredulously ask, "Why would the government...want to stoke unrest?" In any event, perhaps I was talking to the wrong people, but no one I spoke with in Chisinau over the weekend believed the violence of April 7th took place without some government role.

It is true that [the government] reacted to last week's violence with heavy-handedness, arresting around 200 people, beating some in prison and police stations, and not releasing adequate information on who was still held and where. Foreign journalists have been blocked at the borders and access to several opposition websites as well as Facebook and Twitter has been barred, so as to obstruct protesters from mobilising.

But these abuses do not warrant calls for the government to resign, nor for the EU to back demands for a re-run of the elections. They look like sour grapes since there is no evidence of fraud large enough to have awarded the wrong party victory.

Steele filed this piece before news of a second death associated with the protests came out (both deaths reported so far were allegedly the result of police brutality), but he seems to have underestimated the degree to which the opposition would be successful in playing the human rights card and getting European attention. Interestingly, the West wasn't really sitting up and taking notice when the opposition's grievances were related to the electoral process; but the new grievances resulting from the apparent brutality of the government's response may be enough to get some attention.

More importantly, the observation in the last sentence quoted above suggests a lack of understanding of the Moldovan political process. In order to elect the President, 61 votes in Parliament are required. The results initially released, in which the vote for the PCRM on a percentage basis exceeded both exit-polls and earlier surveys by 5-15%, provided exactly 61 mandates (the results were later revised downward by about 0.5% to provide the PCRM with 60 mandates). Thus it becomes a question of what sort of fraud is "large enough" to create a scandal. If the fraud prevented the PCRM from having to reach a compromise with roughly five opposition deputies, it quite possibly could have changed the outcome of the Presidential selection process. After all, at certain borderline levels, fraud need only be minuscule in order to tip the balance.

I normally wouldn't waste time on errors which might not be errors at all - some of my nitpicks of Steele's piece could be just misinterpretations or a choice of emphasis - but it's important to know the details in a situation like this before deciding how one feels about how one would like things to turn out.

There and back

Chisinau, evening of April 13

Last Thursday night, facing a four-day weekend in London alone (my family's in the States for a couple of weeks), I decided to make the most of my free time and travel to Chisinau. I stayed until yesterday afternoon and had the chance to meet with a bunch of friends as well as several members of the local expert community, not to mention all of the quotable taxi drivers I spoke with. I was so busy that the only thing I failed to do which had been a part of my expectations for the trip was write a running account of my time there online. To be honest, though, I thought it was more important to be out talking to people than hunched over my laptop somewhere.

Although I missed the real action (which, since it now appears to have resulted in the loss of at least two lives, should perhaps not be trivialized), I felt like I was there for the second-most-important thing: the days during which Moldovans - opposition voters and PCRM voters; educated and otherwise; Russophone, Romania-oriented and otherwise - were doing their best to make sense of what had happened.

I heard a lot of different versions of the events of last Tuesday, none of which was entirely satisfying, and accumulated about 30 pages of notes which I'm now attempting to filter (for rumors, with which the city was rife) and distill into something that might help outsiders make sense of the situation there. Hopefully I'll be able to post that tomorrow.

Until then, here is a digest of the day's news from Chisinau as circulated in an email by one of my friends who lives there (the only thing I would add to the list is that today President Voronin has announced an amnesty for those individuals arrested in the protests who are not "recidivists." It's not clear whether the police have actually started to release people, but this statement is clearly directed against the opposition's well-advised attempt to take their grievances from the realm of election fraud into the realm of human rights abuses - an escalation of grievances which was of course made possible by the government's poor handling of the instability which followed the elections):

• The Court of Appeal has denied access to voters’ lists for the three Opposition parties, after CEC allowed access to the lists earlier this week;
  

• Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis issued a press statement concerning the situation in Moldova. Davis expressed his grave concern regarding “alleged breaches of human rights with alleged detention of large numbers of people, including children, and restrictions on the freedom of media”. CoE will send an envoy to investigate the situation in Moldova;

• After Romanian President Basescu addressed the Romanian Parliament yesterday and announced his request to the Government of Romania to facilitate the granting of Romanian citizenship to Moldovans, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs stated that Moldova might have to abolish the law on double citizenship in order to protect its sovereignty;
  

• OSCE representative for Freedom of the Media called on Moldovan authorities to allow unimpeded access to international journalists to report from Moldova. OSCE pointed out that the Government’s actions vis-à-vis foreign media is in violation with OSCE principles concerning media freedom;

• Czech PM Mirek Topolanek, whose country holds the EU Presidency, will visit Moldova on April 22 to learn more about the situation in the country in the aftermath of April 5 elections;
  

• Vote recounting is progressing without any incidents, according to the Central Electoral Commission. The Opposition refused to participate in the recount of votes stating that the ruling Communist Party is trying to shift the problem from “how many voted to who voted”. The Opposition stated that thousands of deceased people were on the lists and voted on election day;

• Today the three Opposition parties – Liberals, Liberal-Democrats and Our Moldova Alliance – presented some of the preliminary findings of their electoral fraud investigations. The findings reveal substantial violations, including mass multiple voting, forged signatures, voting with multiple documents and voting without documents. In Cahul, a city in southern Moldova, 2036 frauds were revealed, which represents 10.6% of the city’s electorate;
  

• The leader of the breakaway region of Transnistria has ruled out any possible negotiations with the current Chisinau administration. Smirnov pointed out that the entire international community saw the real face of the current regime in Moldova;

• Gabriel Stati, a prominent Moldovan businessman arrested in Ukraine in the aftermath of April 7 protests, will be extradited to Moldova according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. Stati is accused of financing a coup d’etat and was arrested in Odessa, Ukraine on April 9. He is facing up to 25 years in jail.

Vindictive Voronin

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Unimedia, citing ProTV (story here in Romanian), reports that the government has assessed the damage from the destruction and looting of the Parliament and Presidential Palace at 300 million lei, or roughly 27.2 million US dollars at today's rate.

Voronin has apparently stated (Unimedia cites ProTV, which itself cites official news agency Moldpres for this, but I couldn't find anything on Moldpres's admittedly not very reliably updated website) that repairs to the damaged buildings will be repaired using state funds which had previously been designated for the institutions of higher education at which [some of] the protesters are students.

If this is true, it is difficult to imagine a more petty and irresponsible answer by the head of state to this week's protests. Not only this statement provocative in the immediate term, it would also, if implemented, contribute to one of the major causes of frustration among the youth - an educational system rendered dysfunctional by corruption, which is driven at least in part by a dearth of funding.

The attitude displayed here by Voronin - again, if the story is true, although even if it's someone's provocation the fact that it's so plausible speaks volumes about Voronin's customary demeanor toward the people he governs - goes a long way toward explaining the level of frustration among young people in Chisinau.

Apparently more protests are being planned for tomorrow, and- coincidentally? - the country's main electricity provider is planning blackouts in a number of regions for "repair works."

All Twittered Out?

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It looks like the Twitter phase of what many (especially social media evangelists) are calling the "Twitter Revolution" has passed. According to Nicu Popescu:

Twitter is no longer useful. It has become a victim of its own popularity. If during the first day Twitter had live news from the main square, today Twitter has become a collection of spam. New messages appear every half-second, and the avalanche of information and messages buries any useful information.

Unimedia had the following update this morning (and more interesting updates since - check them out here):

(UPDATE 10:16, April 9, local time) Central Ellection Comittee has allowed the opposition parties to verify the voters lists. The opposition has 4 days starting today, Thursday.

While I'm no expert on the conduct of color revolutions, it would seem that this keeps the election results "in play," i.e. they remain something that can be credibly contested, over the weekend, which is perhaps a good thing for those among opposition parties and protesters who have the stomach for spending more time in the streets voicing their legitimate grievances. On the other hand, it may not be a good thing for the many Moldovans who would rather see a calm resolution to this crisis - preferring "stability," democracy be damned - since the opposition has not shown an ability to resist official provocations and conduct sustained, peaceful protests of the kind that achieved success in Ukraine.

During the next few days, I'd imagine both the authorities and the opposition will be jockeying for position, and the more cynical individuals involved (which some accounts suggest is a category that includes much of the opposition) may see if there are side bargains they can strike with the Communists, since it seems the latter now have the upper hand.

Meanwhile, Unimedia reports that Gabriel Stati, one of the businessmen accused of financing the protests has reportedly been arrested in Odessa, lending credence to Voronin's claims that the backers of the "revolution" have fled the country, so perhaps the behind-the-scenes score-settling among the elites is underway.

Unimedia's Romanian-language page is slightly more current than the English version and reports on two disturbing developments today - students who were involved in the protests being hauled out of their classes and driven away in BMWs and several Romanian reporters getting deported (RIA Novosti is also covering the latter story, no doubt Russia's image-makers love it when the former republics show themselves to be chips off the old block and help overshadow Russia's own bad acts).

Worth reading around the net - another roundup post of blog coverage by Veronica at Global Voices; a brief post by Moldovarious, which also has two sets of photos; and Komsomolskaia Pravda's coverage (in Russian, headlined "Uprising in Chisinau Organized by the Children of Migrant Workers") - don't miss their photo of Natalia Morari at the protests wearing an "I [heart] Barack Obama" t-shirt (amazing, assuming it's not photoshopped, and I have no reason to believe it is except that it plays so well into the hands of those who like to see any protest or political opposition in a post-Soviet country as an American plot). Hey, I love BHO too, but - even granting that the protest Morari's group co-organized was peaceful and probably well-intentioned - it doesn't look like the folks who looted buildings in downtown Chisinau were really after "change we can believe in."

I leave you with a story (apparently intended to be a straight-news item, although it reads a bit like an opinion piece) from today's Moscow Times, which has an interesting take on the situation in Moldova.

Moldova Underscores Failed Russian Policy
09 April 2009
By Nabi Abdullaev / The Moscow Times

Anti-government protests in Moldova this week unfolded in a similar manner to Western-backed uprisings that toppled governments in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Serbia in recent years.

But what should worry the Kremlin is not the threat of a similar uprising at home but the fact that both Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and the opposition groups turned to the West instead of Russia to mediate the conflict, analysts said Wednesday.

Because of the shortsightedness of Russian diplomacy and its failure to project its own "soft" power, the Kremlin faces the possibility of being sidelined once again in a former Soviet state that it considers to be within its realm of influence.


"The policy mistakes are clear and were much discussed after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine," said Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, referring to the weeks of street protests in what was once Russia's strongest post-Soviet ally. The 2004 protests resulted in pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko winning the presidency over the Moscow-backed candidate.

Despite the Kremlin's awareness of its mistakes, it has failed to become a big, benevolent partner to West-leaning former Soviet states since then, resorting instead to energy blackmail and military threats, like with Georgia, Petrov said. This has fueled anti-Russian sentiment among the opposition in those countries, he said.

Moldovan opposition groups took to the streets to demand a vote recount after the Voronin-led Communist Party swept weekend parliamentary elections. The protests turned violent Tuesday, with young people ransacking and looting the president's office and parliament. The authorities regained control of the situation Wednesday.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry portrayed the protests as a foreign-sponsored plot to overthrow Voronin, who like other long-serving post-Soviet leaders has enjoyed strong support from the Kremlin.

"Judging by the slogans shouted in the squares and the many Romanian flags in the hands of the organizers of this outrage, their aim is to discredit the achievements made toward strengthening Moldova's sovereignty," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

The statement was apparently referring to the Romanian flags waved by some protesters and scattered calls for Moldova to be united with neighboring Romania.

Voronin himself denounced the protests as a Romanian-backed coup attempt, announcing that Moldova would introduce a visa regime with Romania and declaring Romania's ambassador to Moldova persona non grata.

He and the opposition asked European governments to intervene.

The EU has agreed to send a special envoy to Chisinau to monitor events, but there has been no talk of any direct role, a diplomat close to talks told Reuters.

Youth-backed color revolutions that ousted deeply entrenched leaders in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005 have ignited fears in the Kremlin, prompting a clampdown on the opposition and nongovernmental organizations and the creation of pro-Kremlin youth groups, including Nashi, to absorb youth political activism.

"The street tactics used in Moldova were that of a color revolution, but these developments are of no threat for us," Nashi leader Nikita Borovikov told The Moscow Times on Wednesday. "Regime change in our country is impossible because Russia's leadership is not passive and cowardly."

Nashi, which once brought tens of thousands of young people onto the streets, and other pro-Kremlin youth groups have kept a low profile after the ruling United Russia party cemented its grip on power in parliamentary elections in 2007.

While the current economic crisis has sparked some anti-government protests, none has come close to posing a challenge to the status quo.

So instead of worrying about whether Russians might catch the anti-government fervor from Moldova, the Kremlin needs to ponder why Voronin and the opposition have turned to the West to resolve their differences, analysts said.

Moldova's decision to shun Russia reveals a longtime fallacy of Russian diplomacy, where the Kremlin unequivocally stands by incumbent leaders in post-Soviet states and largely dismisses contacts with other political forces there, said Yulia Belikova, an analyst with the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, a think tank that consults the Russian government on policy issues.

She said Russian officials needed to start working with opposition groups in other former Soviet republics, especially in Moldova. Moldova was separated from Romania by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1940, and the country has drifted back toward Romania after the Soviet collapse.

"If we're going to speak in terms of a color revolution, the West doesn't need to export it to Moldova. It is already there in the form of Romanian cultural and political influence," Belikova said.

This week's protests might also make it harder for Russia to mediate in Moldova's dispute with its Russian-leaning breakaway republic of Transdnestr, analysts said. It is one of the only post-Soviet conflicts where Moscow has portrayed itself as playing the "good cop" in seeking a resolution -- a role it has taken pains to highlight after its brief war with Georgia last August over Tbilisi's attempt to regain control of its breakaway region of South Ossetia.

President Dmitry Medvedev invited Voronin and the Transdnestr leader Igor Smirnov to Moscow earlier this year for negotiations.

The events in Moldova might give more power to the Transdnestr separatists, who could accuse Voronin of political weakness and an inability to curb Romanian nationalism.

The developments in Moldova also differ from a color revolution because the West is not openly supporting the opposition. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights body, reiterated on Wednesday elections observers' findings that the elections were fair.

The Kremlin will further shape its response to the protests after information surfaces about whether they were instigated solely by the Moldovan opposition or whether they were supported by Romania and other Western players, said Sergei Mikheyev, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.

At the moment, it seems unlikely that European powers or the United States would want to push for regime change in Moldova, Europe's poorest country located off major trade and energy routes, and risk spoiling their improving ties with Moscow, Mikheyev said.

"But we all have seen in the past how the West has assured Russia of its best intentions but at the same time acted to upset Russia's interests," he added.

Roundup of blog coverage

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Picking through the online detritus, here are some of the reactions to the events in Chisinau from bloggers around the world:

Alina Stefanescu has a number of posts at her Totalitarianism Today and Romania Revealed blogs. One of them gets my award for headline of the day - "The Moldovan government is smoking crack and trying to convince others to smoke it as well."

Eternal Remont observed that - based on the violent behavior of the protesters - "This ain't no color revolution."

Kosmopolito posted some exclusive photos as well as the third part of a serial post by a guest blogger writing from Chisinau.

The unrest seems to be spawning new monikers daily (note that my use of "Grape Revolution" as a tag for these posts is pretty tongue-in-cheek - I needed a tag to keep all of the posts about the protests together, and that just happened to be the one I chose) - UN Dispatch tries out "#pman Revolution," and Dumitru Minzarari mentions (in a great post which has also attracted some worthwhile comments) another name that is apparently being used:

Now the communists and their Eastern “partners” are building a huge media myth to discredit the pure ideals of Moldovan youth willing nothing more than freedom and respect for their rights. Their protests were labeled the “Orphans’ Revolution” because under the Communist government close to a third of Moldovan citizens (their parents) went abroad to earn money for a living.

Minzarari has another post where he translates a Russian blog post that posits there may have been a deliberate decision by the authorities to allow the protesters to loot government buildings, presumably so that the protests would take on the character of a riot and their political demands would be discredited. If that was the plan, it may have worked. Somewhat relatedly, Minzarari also has an article at TOL dated April 7th about the Transnistria settlement process and headlined "Moscow Is Still the Master."

Sean has a post up focusing on the role of youth in the protests, noting that "unlike the innocuous colors of orange, tulip, and rose, the Moldovan youth appears to favor blood red."

I would be remiss if I didn't also point out GVO's main post so far on the situation in Moldova.

The "Updates" post at the Neighborhood blog by Nicu Popescu should be a good place to go for news.

Popescu has a couple of good posts at his Romanian-language blog, discussing the merits and effectiveness of non-violent protest and the degree to which Voronin has become a liability and a "factor of instability" for Moldova. I've taken a stab at translating portions of the latter post.

"The prospect that the Communist victory could lead to a situation where Voronin would remain the de facto head of state for another 4 years...is one of the key causes of the violent protests," writes Popescu. "During the 8 years of his presidency Voronin was seen as a symbol of stability, but today he has become the main factor in polarizing society." Popescu suggests that Voronin gracefully leave the political stage with a guarantee of immunity from prosecution - a la Yeltsin, I suppose - and continues:

The violent protests in Chisinau symbolize most of all that whatever stability there was in recent years has come to an end. Moldova is facing a turbulent period in which world economic instability, internal political cleavages and the personality of Vladimir Voronin could shatter the Republic of Moldova's fragile statehood.

Another outstanding Moldovan blogger (and, like the others, a proper specialist in real life), Alexandru Culiuc, has a post noting that he's seen a spike in traffic in recent days even though he hasn't had anything to say about the events in Chisinau. I translated a part of his post, in which he refuses to weigh in on the events of the week other than to pose a disturbing question:

Having access to a relatively limited set of sources of information, it is difficult for me to give a balanced assessment of the situation. Nevertheless, I daresay that the phrase "Revolution in Chisinau," which aboundes in the headlines of news items on Romanian websites, is inappropriate. It is quite possible that after some time has passed the recent events in downtown Chisinau will come to be characterized rightly as the greatest man-made calamity Moldova has endured since the war in Transnistria. And just like with the conflict in Transnistria, no one is to blame and no one takes responsibility - everyone points their fingers at each other. Will the outcome really be so disastrous? I don't know, but I don't think we'll have long to wait for an answer to that question.

In the Russian blogosphere, "'Color Revolution' in Moldova" is the number one blogged about topic according to Yandex, which counts over 3,700 posts on that theme in the past three days. Here is one which is at least somewhat humorous in places, although it displays an attitude of condescension toward Moldovans which is all too typical among Russian bloggers.

Natalia Morari, one of the organizers of the initial, peaceful proitests and a popular topic of discussion in the Russian blogosphere in her own right, resurfaced Wednesday with another post justifying the protest organizers' actions, which has already attracted over 900 comments. If they are anything like the comments to other recent posts, they probably contain numerous vicious personal attacks on her and surprisingly few messages of support.

Some commenters seem to be questioning Morari's political judgement - like this one, who wonders why Morari wore an "I love Obama" T-shirt to a rally in Chisinau, "knowing that color revolution activists are forever facing accusations of being pro-American puppets. And in that situation, to give your opponents such a tasty morsel..."

Morari's husband, fellow New Times journalist Ilya Barabanov, is apparently also now in Moldova and posted a wild-eyed and completely incredible (by which I mean, not credible) rumor of weapons being flown into the country from Russia and transported from the airport to downtown Chisinau in ambulances.

The Gray Lady's Moldova coverage

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Although there have been very credible reports that some foreign journalists have had a difficult time getting into Moldova, the New York Times has a correspondent on the ground. This means that Americans will read about events in Moldova in the national paper of record and perhaps I'll no longer have to explain to people where the country is located (though perhaps I shouldn't get my hopes up).

The paper's main recent articles are here and here, and the comments page to the first one has a wealth of thoughtful Moldovan voices (+1 more) occupying various points of view but mostly seeming to agree that Tuesday's violence was unacceptable. There are not many other places I can think of where one could see a relatively articulate debate about events in Moldova conducted in English.

In addition, the NYT has updated its Moldova topic page, which is a quite fortunate since in the past I recall it being a bit sparse - perhaps in part because articles about Moldova in the NYT seemed to run no more frequently than once every two months.

[Bonus bit for followers of other protest-prone post-Soviet countries - on the eve of opposition rallies in Tbilisi, the NYT's The Lede blog has a hilarious but also illuminating piece about the latest (semi-manufactured) scandal surrounding Saak, titled "A President, His Masseuse and Her Blog"]

Finally, the NYT has an op-ed on the situation in Moldova by Andrew Wilson, the guy who literally wrote the book on the Orange Revolution. It's definitely worth reading in full:

Europe’s Next Revolution?
By ANDREW WILSON
New York Times, April 8, 2009

The demonstrations in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau after last Sunday’s elections are not like Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004. Most obviously, they have been far from peaceful. Nor have they been provoked by incontrovertible evidence of massive voting fraud. The demonstrators just don’t like the governing party: Moldova is the only European country where a nominally “Communist” party has won largely free and fair elections, in 2001 and 2005.

So why the protests? The Communists fought dirty in the campaign, but not as dirty as others in the region. Regional TV was harassed, but the main national opposition channel stayed open. Businesses were pressured to sever ties with the opposition and the president reminded voters none too subtly who would pay for their new schools. Nothing was done to make voting easier for the hundreds of thousands of Moldovans abroad, who were less likely to vote for the Communists.

But Moldova is still a relatively open country. Its people have access to Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian mass media. There is no single economic player of which ownership would effectively grant control of the whole country — like Gazprom in Russia. In 2007, 51 percent of Moldovan exports went to the E.U. and only 17 percent to Russia. Even Transnistria, a major producer of steel and cement, trades mainly with Europe.

So the Communists may have padded the result. The official exit poll gave them 45 percent of the vote and they claimed exactly 50 percent — compared with 46 percent in 2005 and less than 40 percent in local elections in 2007. But the result was not a total steal. The main opposition parties, the pro-European Liberals and Liberal-Democrats, only won around 13 percent each, and the “Our Moldova” alliance just under 10 percent.

But the Communists need 61 out of the 101 seats to elect the next president and other officials. Their leader, President Vladimir Voronin, has served his maximum two terms: The most likely outcome is for him to become chairman of Parliament and for Moldova to “rediscover” that it is actually a parliamentary republic.

Funnily enough, the Communists are forecast to get exactly 61 seats. In 2005 they had to make an alliance with the Christian Democrats — who suffered in the long-term, losing their traditional pro-Romanian electorate and ending up with only 3 percent of the vote. This time, the Communists will not need to make alliances: They can easily pick off one or two businessmen from the other three parties’ lists.

A second reason for the protests has been the Communists’ flirtation with Russia. Moldova’s foreign policy has swung back and forth in recent years, but Mr. Voronin has conducted a largely pro-E.U. course since 2003. Yet in a close contest this time, he relied heavily on Moscow as an election resource.

This trend could well continue. Russia is seeking to settle the dispute with the separatist “Transnistrian Republic” on its own terms. It is also seeking to buy up assets such as power plants in Chisinau and Balti, which now look relatively cheap.

A third factor is that Moldova is yet another country facing economic crisis. It has artificially prolonged a boom in local consumption through the April elections, financed by external remittances from as many as 500,000 Moldovans working in the E.U. and 344,000 in Russia — sums that once comprised a third of GDP. Mr. Voronin’s circle takes a cut on imports and on construction fueled by remittances — and so has tried to keep the cycle going for more than the usual electoral reasons. But imports are now three times exports and customs duties make up 70 percent of budget revenues. A crunch is coming.

When it does, the E.U. has a number of cards to play. Visas are a huge issue for Moldovans working legally or illegally in the E.U. The E.U. Border Monitoring Mission has helped cut down on corruption and the trafficking of people and drugs through Transnistria. Moldova may soon have to go cap-in-hand to the I.M.F.

Moldova may be a small country, but it is one of the region’s few democracies. And it is symptomatic of a broader trend. In the global economic crisis there is a real risk of the E.U. stepping back from the “eastern neighborhood” as it plunges into ever deeper crises. Russia, on the other hand, does not fall back on utilitarian thinking in times of crisis. It is investing to win influence in the future.

Andrew Wilson is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"Down with the communist magnates"!

Unimedia continued its regularly updated English-language play-by-play account of events in Chisinau on Wednesday, posting yet another gallery of photos and a link to this interesting flier which was apparently being circulated on the main square downtown this evening.

It reads at first glance like a crazy, exclamation-point-abusing combination of the laments of downtrodden migrant workers the world over with something that might have appeared in a Soviet newspaper during the late Gorbachev period:

However, it gets to the heart of many of the issues that analysts are spilling a lot of pixels trying to explain today. The document states that it is the "first official declaration" of the protesters and reads, in part, as follows (my translation):

We are many, we are young, we are united! We will go to the very end[.]

You can't control us any longer!

We are sick and tired of tolerating a totalitarian regime, which relies on fear and terror!

Communism is responsible for the largest genocide in history!

We don't want to be ruled by those who killed or deported our parents or grandparents! [...]

We do not want extreme solutions* - we request the President be put on trial according to the Constitution!

We're not engaged in anyone else's politics and we are not paid by anyone!

We are not of any political color - we are pure and transparent!

Down with the communist magnates who send us to do menial work and steal our money even from Western Union!

The luxury furniture and parquet in the Presidential and Parliamentary buildings were bought with the commission fees from currency exchanges!

We don't want to go to Italy, Portugal or Spain!

We don't want to go to Canada or Moscow!

We want to work and be paid in our own country!

We want a country based on respect and trust, not on fear and shakedowns!

* Presumably this is intended to reassure Voronin that a Ceausescu-like fate is not envisioned for him.

This is much more of an emotional appeal than the declaration released by the just-formed People's Anticommunist Coalition 2009, the full text of which is available in English at this post by Nicu Popescu, which is growing longer and longer with updates by the hour.

[Update April 9] Unimedia has published its own English translation of the document shown above, which translates the full document and is mostly intelligible except for one particularly humorous mistake: they have the protesters proclaiming, "Down with the communist magnets[!]"

Perhaps this is a Freudian slip, because - with no disrespect to the young people whose boiling-over frustration is so well expressed in the declaration above - if emotional declarations with limited policy proposals are the best the opposition can muster, they may again find the ruling Communists exerting a force of attraction among the population.

Note that - as I mentioned above - this is in fact not the best the opposition can do; there is another, more articulate declaration making the rounds. Read it midway down the page here.

Roundup of English-language media reports

A ditty from the protests (most likely the ones in Chisinau but possibly
from the demonstrations of support in Bucharest) which reads,

"Three women went to vote
Two of them dead and one of them living
How many votes does that make?"

Not an idle question these days in Chisinau, apparently.
[image source]

There is now so much Moldova-related content on the interwebs that it's impossible to keep up. Below is an attempt at a roundup of some of the English-language coverage from Wednesday.

ITAR-TASS ran a story with some alarming remarks from Voronin:

The Moldovan authorities “may resort to force, if unrest is resumed in Chisinau,” President Vladimir Voronin said here on Wednesday. Speaking at a meeting of Moldovan leaders, he stressed that he had warned the opposition of such a possibility.

“There is limit to our patience. Yesterday I was on the verge of giving the order. The authorities have every reason to resort to force in accordance with the law. I warned the opposition that they could be put not to the parliament, but to some other place. They should learn to lose with dignity,” Voronin stressed.

RFE/RL has had a number of articles on this week's events in Chisinau: "Moldovan President Accuses Romania as Protests Continue"; "Moldovan President Vows to Repel 'Coup' After Protests Turn Violent"; and (although I am a bit weary of the "Twitter Revolution" meme) "The Revolution Will Be Tweeted - Moldovan Protesters Exploit Social Networking Sites."

An AP story reporting the status quo as of Wednesday morning.

Reuters reports on the Russian Foreign Ministry's reaction to the events in Chisinau, covers the opposition's reaction to the Central Election Committee's apparent refusal to abide by the agreement reached with Voronin to conduct a recount, and - in a most interesting story that I haven't seen elsewhere - reports that ratings agency Fitch has warned Moldova's sovereign credit rating will be at risk of being downgraded if the unrest persists.

Moldovan news portal Azi.md has some photos from inside the heavily damaged Parliament building and, on their English-language page, an article quoting one of the OSCE election observers as follows:

"Our report was much too warm and friendly towards that vote. The problem is that it was an OSCE report. The OSCE includes the Russ ians. And the Russians' view was quite substantially different from my own, for example."

The BBC has some audio from an interview with the same observer, discussing her "grave misgivings" about the results. This could be an important bit of ammo for the opposition in the rhetorical (hopefully) battles to come - if they can't at least show substantial reason to believe that there was substantial falsification of election results, they will not get traction with many within Moldova or with the Western countries and organizations they may be hoping to rely on for moral support.

The Economist's coverage is headlined "Moldova Burning" but does a good job of stepping back from the flames and focusing on the roles of Russia, Romania and the EU in the turmoil and its possible resolution:

The political upheavals cry out for attention from the EU, which has failed to get to grips with Moldova’s ills. As with Ukraine’s orange revolution five years ago, it may take a heavyweight outsider to get talks going between entrenched but discredited authorities and an enthusiastic but incoherent opposition. If Europe cannot solve Moldova’s problems, it is hard to see much future for the trumpeted “Eastern Partnership” which is meant to reinvigorate EU policies towards the six ex-Soviet countries on its eastern borders.

An op-ed in the Kyiv Post chronicles some of the more unsavory remarks made by certain Moldovan opposition figures in the past but probably paints with too broad a brush in suggesting that the country is "Torn Between the Communists and the Far Right." One of those who comes in for criticism in the piece is Iurie Rosca, whose party didn't make it into parliament this time but who has been outspoken about his suspicion that the situation in Chisinau has unfolded according to Moscow's plans, in part as punishment for Voronin's refusal in 2003 to sign the Kozak Memorandum, a Russia-backed plan for settling the conflict over Transnistria.

Russia Profile has two pieces worth checking out - one discussing the the cleavages in Moldovan society which drove the protesters to feel sufficiently "insulted and humiliated" to take to the streets, and another, which seems to have been written before the protests but provides good background on the campaign, the elections and the Moldovan political scene:

Voronin has openly stated that he would pursue a Den Xiaoping outcome, allowing him to continue to determine the country's trajectory while not holding the highest office. This lent the Communist Party a powerful motive to force through an unchallengeable electoral result, similar to that achieved by United Russia in the 2007 Duma elections in Russia, intended as a future power base for then President Vladimir Putin. [...]

Moldova is not only anomalous in terms of its constitution and its geography (it counts as a Black Sea littoral state although it is landlocked). It is also one of the few countries to be both attempting to reintegrate a secessionist region -- the tiny self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic--while staving off attempts to be absorbed by the neighboring big brother Romania, with which it shares history and language.

Its foreign policy is equally anomalous: in the 1990s, Moldova strove to reunify with Russia within the Russia-Belarus union, until Russia's refusal to play ball caused the same Communist Party to make a smooth shift in 2005, and aim at EU membership and cooperation with NATO instead. Experts see the elections as having paradoxically strengthened the Communists in negotiations with the EU, and thus given new impulses to Moldova’s integration with the union.

Independent political analyst Ion Marandici said that "the Moldovan Communists have declared very often that their goal is to join the European Union. That is why, paradoxically, they will go on with the economic reforms while continuing to infringe on media freedom, freedom of expression and more generally on human rights, in order to combat their political competitors."

The Moldovan government has cranked up its rather creaky English-language online outlet, the website of state-run wire agency Moldpres, so you can read about the opposition's bad acts there. And here's the official text of the Moldovan MFA's statement declaring the Romanian ambassador persona non grata.

And if you're looking for a very long and thorough recap of Tuesday's events laced with commentary, check out "Chronicles of a Post-Electoral Day" on Moldova.org (which also has lots of video clips, even one from a demonstration of support in Dublin, Ireland). The piece suggests that Western representatives in Moldova misread the situation after the elections (although to be fair the protests took many Moldovans by surprise as well):

A few days ago, ahead of the protests, the author of these lines was invited to speak in front of the EU Ambassadors in Moldova – they were told that the liberals might have three options – accept the election results that they believe were long-frauded, attempt a protest scenario as in “orange revolution” in Ukraine or protest and slowly fade away, like in Belarus. A good number of Ambassadors laughed when they’ve heard about Moldovan opposition organising protests like in Ukraine, diplomats basically showing there will be no support for such a scenario. Many of them, probably, are rethinking this scenario now – one thing is clear, they were far behind the events.

The signals of lack of support that the West is now giving to Moldovan liberals are read by the Communists in one simple manner – they feel their impunity to orchestrate any scenario and get away with it. Just like in the times when the West left the Belarus opposition alone.

The liberals are now feeling somehow abandoned, maybe even afraid. They want a rule of law Moldova, they do not want destruction and they wish no connection with it. However, they need to take a final decision and they understand that they are left with no way back. Its “[either] – or”. Its: Europe or Belarus.

Let’s hope that Europe will not be far behind the events at least this time.

Roundup of Russian - and other - MSM coverage

[Click to expand, or go to the original source to see the image at full size]

First, for all you English-only types, here's the NYT's latest report on the goings-on in Chisinau.

The following is just a selection of the Russian-language media's coverage of the situation in Moldova. For more coverage, visit Yandex's news aggregator or Russian-language Google News.

Above is RIA Novosti's map of the protests which unfolded on Monday and Tuesday. All of their coverage of the story can be found here.

RIA Novosti also has some stories about the events in English, reporting most recently that President Voronin has blamed Romania for the demonstrations, which he referred to as an attempted coup, he has expelled the Romanian ambassador and established a visa regime with Moldova's neighbor.

The BBC's Russian Service reports that Voronin also accused "the wealthiest sponsors" of the unrest of having already fled the country. Presumably he is referring to the Moldovan opposition's local backers in the business community. There's an active debate underway in the BBC's forum on the subject.

Lenta.ru's coverage of the story can be found here, I'll highlight this article as worth checking out for its bizarreness - the Eurasian Youth Union has apparently criticized Voronin for being unable to contain the protests and suggested that he should have used Vlad-the-Impaler-type methods instead.

Kommersant also reports on the introduction of a visa regime with Romania and has a story on the protests headlined "The First Anti-Communist [War]." Kommersant also has some video posted:

Vedomosti reports that the Russian Duma will be discussing the situation in Moldova today - not that they're likely to be of much use.

Gazeta.ru has a story suggesting things have quieted down in Chisinau and an interview with opposition leader Mihai Ghimpu in which he blames the authorities for yesterday's violence, disavows the seizure of government buildings and claims that the police "opened the door" and let protesters in.

Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal's Sergei Buntman has a commentary piece that compares the Moldovan protesters unfavorably to Ukraine's Orange Revolutionaries and suggests that their actions more closely resemble the riots in Moscow in 2002 which were occasioned by Russia's loss to Japan in a soccer match. He also draws a parallel to the violent overthrow of Ceausescu in 1989, remarking that the protests in Chisinau are "fanatical and very Romanian" in more ways than one.

NTV reports protesters downtown again on Wednesday (see here for the text of their report):

Further updates and some food for thought

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin in happier times - in Sochi last August with Russian President Medvedev
[image source]

Our friend in Chisinau reported in another email that as of 11am things were fairly peaceful downtown:

[T]he parliament, presidency and government buildings...are currently
being protected by the police. The entries into Chisinau are supposedly
blocked so that the citizens from the rest of the country could [not]
reach the city center and join the protesters.

The opposition leaders have proofs that the elections were frauded en
masse. But they also call for PEACEFUL demonstrations and try to
control the masses.

As of now the president has only offered derogatory comments to the
crowds and seems to have been in an advanced state of drunkenness when
giving interviews to the reporters last night.

That's it for now. The crowds are gathering in the center slowly.
Today's protests are likely to be even more powerful in terms of
number of people on the streets.

Unimedia's English-language page is being updated again and reports 4,000 protesters downtown as of 12:25pm local time.

One of our Moldovan friends in London reports that some of her friends - Moldovans living in Romania - chartered a minibus for a journey to Chisinau but were turned away at the border, so apparently reports of strict controls at the national border are true, in addition to the restrictions on people getting from rural areas or other cities to the capital.

Below is a long article which is worth reading if you want to understand why many in Moldova did actually vote for the Communists and might be opposed to these protests. It was written before things got out of hand yesterday but provides very useful background on the political scene in the country, although obviously colored by the author's own opinions.

Ten Reasons Why the Communist Party Won Moldova's Elections Again

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 66

April 7, 2009 01:43 PM Age: 17 hrs

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Home Page, Domestic/Social, Moldova

By: Vladimir Socor

As anticipated (see EDM, March 13, 16) the Communist Party has won Moldova's parliamentary elections on April 5, far outdistancing the parties that ran on anti-communist platforms. On paper at least--and every fourth year in real practice--Moldova is a parliamentary republic. The new parliament will approve the country's government and elect a new president in place of the incumbent Vladimir Voronin, who has served out his second and final term of office.

The International Election Observation Mission--consisting of delegations from the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), and the European Parliament--evaluated the elections positively on the whole, with some reservations not affecting the outcome or the overall initial assessment. More detailed observations and recommendations for further improvements are to be presented in several months' time (OSCE press release, April 6).

Within 24 hours of the polls' closure and more than 98 percent of the votes counted, the Communists received 49.95 percent of the votes cast, the Liberal Party almost 13 percent, the Liberal-Democrat Party more than 12 percent, and Our Moldova Alliance (also claiming a liberal mantle), 10 percent. The voter turnout was 59.5 percent. The communist and liberal labels are merely nominal in these cases.

These four parties (out of a dozen parties competing in these elections) have passed the 6 percent threshold for entering the parliament. Thanks to redistribution of votes at the expense of losing parties under the proportional system, the Communists will hold 60 or 61 seats in the 101-seat parliament. The Liberals, Liberal-Democrats, and Our Moldova will most probably hold 15, 14, and 11 seats, respectively, according to the Central Electoral Commission's announcement (Moldpres, April 6).

Uniquely in Europe and the post-Soviet world, Moldova's Communists not only returned to power, but won it three consecutive times. Already in 1998 the party had won a plurality of 30 percent of the votes and 40 percent of parliamentary seats, but chose to remain in opposition at that time. The Communists proceeded to win 50.1 percent of the votes and 71 percent of parliamentary seats in 2001; 46 percent of the votes and 56 percent of the seats in 2005; and went on to improve on that performance in the 2009 elections.

Opposition parties had confidently expected to reverse that trend this time. Opinion surveys and many other indices from the field, however, presaged another Communist success, the only uncertainty being the victory margin. The margin is a critical factor, given the constitutional requirements to confirm the government by an absolute majority of parliamentary votes and elect the new head of state with the votes of at least 61 deputies. If that falls short, the parliament dissolves and new elections must be held. In this sense, the election's outcome was uncertain all along; and may still hang in the balance with regard to the election of the head of state.

The Communist Party's electoral performance rests on distinct local circumstances, often underappreciated by outsiders:

[click "Read More..." below for the full article]


1) The Communist brand remains attractive to a critical mass of Moldovan voters. These compare (as do many Russian voters) the 1990s unfavorably both with the Soviet period and with the post-2001 period (when the Moldovan Communists returned to power).

2) The president and government used the incumbency advantage to the hilt, appearing in TV newscasts to open gas lines, agricultural machinery stations, and construction projects in the presence of appreciative voters during the electoral campaign. They also resorted to populist measures, from lowering the bread price to donating to charities during the campaign.

3) The incumbent government, predominantly of technical experts, is unquestionably Moldova's most competent and convincing to voters since independence, contrasting with previous governments that were formed on a political basis. Prime Minister Zinaida Grecianai, one year in that post, enjoys a high popularity rating. The current government includes only two communist ministers, out of nineteen. Half of the ministers, however, ran for parliament on the Communist Party's list, adding to the party's "administrative resources" in this campaign.

4) The Communist Party is the only major party with a multi-ethnic electorate. Most opposition parties (including all three that have now entered the parliament) rely entirely on ethnic Moldovan voters (a minority of whom define themselves as Romanians) and have not seriously attempted to reach out to "Russian-speaking" voters. Many "Russian-speakers," who defected from the Europe-oriented Communist Party in recent years, crossed over to small pro-Moscow groups or declined to vote, rather than joining Moldovan opposition parties. The Communist Party was able to offset that loss by increasing its share of the ethnic Moldovan vote.

5)Exit polls, conducted by Western-funded NGOs, showed that the Communist Party made significant inroads into young age cohorts for the first time in these elections. As the poll coordinator, sociologist Arcadie Barbarosie (head of the Soros Foundation's local affiliate) observes, the Communist Party can no longer be stereotyped as a "pensioners'" or Soviet-nostalgics' party (Moldpres, Imedia, April 6).

6) Still communist, nevertheless, in its disciplined style of operating, the party has developed an effective style of door-to-door campaigning in towns and villages. Although it fully (if informally) controls public television, and less fully public radio, the party gave up some of its public airtime during the final phase of the campaign, reflecting its confidence in door-to-door activity.

7) The Communist Party ran a sophisticated campaign under the direction of presidential adviser Marc Tcaciuc, long reputed as the "grey eminence," and who has now earned the sobriquet of the party's "grey matter" in this campaign (NewsIn, April 6). Apart from the public TV and radio company, the party controls two other television channels and one other country-wide radio channel.

8) While committed to European integration--a matter of national consensus above party lines--the Communist Party also advertised itself as Russia's favored political partner in Moldova during this campaign. Voronin's photo opportunity with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on March 18 (see EDM, March 20, 25) helped to prevent Moldova's pro-Russia parties from gaining enough votes to enter the parliament. Voronin's move also undoubtedly played well with mainstream Moldovan voters, among whom Medvedev and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold the top two places in the popularity ratings. Voronin a distant third overall, but is a distant first among domestic political figures.

9) The opposition-dominated Chisinau Municipal Council, a scene of chaos and nepotism, has played into the Communist Party's hands. The party constantly compared that scene with the situation in the pre-2001 parliament, which had helped discredit the multi-party system in Moldova. Certain Liberal-Democrat and Our Moldova leaders are also associated in the public memory with that parliament, making it possible for the Communists to campaign once again against "the 1990s" in these elections.

10) Half a dozen parties with theoretical chances to pass the 6 percent threshold campaigned ineffectively, competing against each other as well as against the Communists. Anti-communist slogans proved once again ineffective and largely irrelevant in Moldova. Inasmuch as the Communist Party today is a far cry from its pre-1991 predecessor, mere anti-communism is yesteryear's battle in Moldova. No fewer than four opposition parties advertised themselves as Liberal, in a country completely devoid of a bourgeoisie. Both programatically and organizationally, the opposition failed to present a credible alternative to the incumbent majority party.