John McConnico/AP
On Tuesday, protests against Sunday's parliamentary election turned violent. Police were overwhelmed by more than 10,000 demonstrators who ransacked offices in parliament.
A protester walks past security forces that barricaded themselves behind their shields outside the Parliament in Chisinau, Moldova, on Tuesday. Protesters broke into the president's office and hurled furniture and computers on the street.
(Gleb Garanich/Reuters)Moldovans erupt in protest after decades of silence
Thousands of young Moldovans stormed through the capital to protest alleged fraud in elections won by the Communist Party.
By Fred Weir | Correspondent 04.08.09
MOSCOW – Twenty years ago, as Romanians were overthrowing their despotic Communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu in an explosive discovery of freedom, their ethnically Romanian brethren in next-door Moldova – then still part of the USSR – were quiescent.
In recent years, as nearby Georgians and Ukrainians launched pro-democracy “colored revolutions” that brought down their bureaucratic regimes, the citizens of now-independent Moldova, having elected Europe’s only Communist Party government in 2001, remained conspicuously calm and silent.
But on Tuesday, thousands of young Moldovans surprised the world by erupting into the streets of the capital Chisinau to protest alleged fraud in Sunday’s elections, which saw the ruling Communist Party returned with 50 percent of the votes.
The protesters moved rapidly through the city, telegraphing their plans to supporters via text-messaging, Facebook, and Twitter, and succeeded in trashing several government offices and the president’s headquarters and setting fire to the Parliament before riot troops clawed back control by early Wednesday.
Nearly 100 police were injured, more than 200 protesters were hurt during the riots, and 193 were arrested, according to Moldova’s Interior Ministry. A few hundred demonstrators were reportedly regrouping Wednesday, but experts said the worst was probably over for now.
“I can’t say it was the beginning of a revolution,” says Arkady Barbaroshiye, director of the independent Institute of Public Policy in Chisinau. “It was a spontaneous protest by young people, mostly students, caused by rumors of falsification in the elections. The deeper causes are poverty, hopeless prospects for youth, and the deterioration of democratic standards in this country.”
Communist President Vladimir Voronin declared victory, announcing that a Romanian-inspired “colored revolution” had been averted in his country.
“We know that certain forces from Romania masterminded these riots,” he told journalists. “Romanian flags which were planted on state buildings in Chisinau prove this.”
Moldova, a tiny Balkan state of around 4.5 million that was part of Romania until 1940, is Europe’s poorest country and potentially one of the most unstable. It remains deeply divided between the ethnically Romanian majority and the Slavic-populated breakaway statelet of Transdniestr, which has maintained its defacto independence, backed by Russia, since winning a bloody civil war in the early 1990s.
Sunday’s elections were certified as meeting international standards by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but that didn’t allay suspicions of vote-rigging and coercion among many Moldovans, who felt dismayed that only three non-Communist opposition parties managed to hurdle the 6 percent barrier for getting into Parliament, with a combined total of 35 percent of the votes.
Full control of Parliament will enable the Communists to name Moldova’s next president after Mr. Voronin steps down next month.
“There is no trust in the authorities who organized the election,” says Mr. Barbaroshiye. “People are frightened that we are heading into a police regime, a dictatorship.”
Officials accuse the protesters of being Romanian nationalists seeking reunification with that state, which is now a member of the European Union and the NATO military alliance. But many protesters, speaking to journalists during the demonstrations, said that all they wanted was a replay of the disputed elections.
“We call for a new election to be held, we will win it,” Serafim Urecheanu of the parliamentary opposition party Our Moldova, told a Chisinau rally Wednesday, according to news reports.
But in Moscow, there was palpable satisfaction at the evident survival of one the few relatively pro-Russian governments in the region, even though relations between the two countries have cooled in recent years.
“Yes, it was an attempt to stage a colored revolution in Moldova, but it failed,” says Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the official Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Moscow.
“Unfortunately, it has become common for the opposition in post-Soviet countries to try to seize power after losing elections by taking to the streets. We know of some successful cases [in Ukraine and Georgia], but it’s not a democratic way of coming to power.”
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2. mike | 04.08.09
Its likely Bush’s fault, or the Halliburton/Cheney cabal of neo-cons bent on ruining the world
4. ReallyHarry | 04.08.09
WAKE UP….not everything in the world is controlled by America…if it were we would be way my “ARROGANT” than we already are.
5. Harrysleftfoot | 04.08.09
God forbid that America plays a role in anything…oh yea we tried to do that after world war 1 and had to go back again and save Europe. I guess someone finally decided 100s of thousands of dead Americans to save Europe TWICE was enough.
7. Franco | 04.08.09
Maybe the people were just tired of being oppressed by the defunct theories of a corrupt communist government, but that doesnt matter,just blame the U.S.? Please open your eyes and try to see past all the BS that is fed to you in the guise of news and understand that U.S. and the C.I.A. have probably saved your life and everyone’s at some point in time and just be thankful for it.
9. Freewriter | 04.08.09
Yes, yes, it’s the CIA and they’re in league with the Illuminati, man. Big Brother is behind everything man.
Give me a break, the U.S. government couldn’t cover up Watergate and they couldn’t hide WMDs in the desert to pretend to justify the war in Iraq. It’s astounding how incompetent the U.S. government has become. How on earth could they cover up staging a revolution in Moldova?
10. Rational Thinker | 04.08.09
Yes of course, its that simple. The CIA is behind it, end of mystery! No confusing or complex historical and cultural background needed. Learning the whole story might be confounding enough to prevent uninformed snap judgments. We wouldn’t want that.
11. richard potter | 04.08.09
WE should keep in mind that Russia has oppressed many millions of its own
people, taking freedom their own people and suppressing freedoms within and outside its boarders. The news media has been a target of this communist oligarch that seeks a further dismantling of human rights. WE should keep this in our thoughts as we begin “fresh START.”
12. Freedom | 04.08.09
Having lived in Moldova for a while in the early 2000 (actually in Chisinau), the people were beginning to become restless about the threat of becoming communist again. While America is running towards Marxism, people who have lived under it are trying to run towards freedom. This is not a riot that came out of nowhere. It has been brewing for a while. And this is not the end of the “revolution”.
13. Possum | 04.08.09
Here in Moldova, the older folks retain a fond memory for the Communists and the Soviet State. The younger people know their future lies with the west. They younger people also know the truth about Moldova - that Moldova is Romania, and has been since the 14th century (except for two brief periods of Russian ownership). The Rusians were very effective in promoting the illusion of a historical state of Moldova.
As long as the communists retain power (and Voronin will installa puppet president as Putin has done), Moldova is in the toilet.
14. Jean | 04.08.09
We are not running toward Marxism. If socialism is when the government controls the means of production it is only that way somewhat here and then only by default. The big businesses begged gor take-over.
If some capitalists, of which I am one, hadn’t gotten so gosh darn ridiculously greedy, they wouldn’t have run their own businesses into the ground…figuring, “with my millions, I’ll be OK. What the hey!”
If the Republicans hadn’t let the drug companies rape the Medicare system, and if the Medical Business wasn’t so slow to change, private health care would be in much stronger shape.
Any system can work if the needs of most of the people are dressed most of the time and the needs of the few are met a lot of the time…and yes, some will usually manage to get rich, no matter what.
17. John Kooms | 04.08.09
I was in Chisinau Moldova about seven years ago , the poverty was a shock to me , their lives were as bleak and hopeless as could be . People were elbow to elbow on the side walks of the main streets trying to sell a hand full of black oil sunflower seeds or maybe a fish or even a few used nuts and bolts , anything , in order to survive . I could see this was once a beautiful place but it looked like post world war two , nothing was kept up or maintained . At that time the average income was said to be 25 dollars a month if I recall correctly and naturally crime and corruption was terrible .We Americans know the word poverty but it is a real shock to actually see it in person and I was a changed man when I came home . I don’t see Moldova changing with out a revolution , the powers that be will not otherwise allow it and I do not believe this was a fair and honest election , no way .
18. fred weir | 04.09.09
Sally, please note. From Wikkipedia, but could be many other sources:
The Balkans:
Balkan peninsula with northwest border Soča-Krka-SavaThe term “The Balkans” covers not only those countries which lie within the boundaries of the “Balkan Peninsula”, but may also include Croatia, Slovenia, Romania and even Hungary.[2] Slovenia, which was part of Yugoslavia from 1919 to 1991, lies north of the Danube-Sava line and therefore outside the Peninsula, but prior to 1991 the whole of Yugoslavia was considered to be part of the Balkans.[3] The European territories of Turkey, which are located geographically in the Balkan Peninsula, are not generally included in the Balkan region.[3]
In most of the English-speaking, western world, the countries commonly included in the Balkan region are:[4]
Albania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Greece
Kosovo (Independence from Serbia is disputed)
Macedonia
Montenegro
Serbia
Other countries sometimes included are:
Moldova
Romania
Slovenia
19. Spell | 06.03.09
I’ve lived on both sides of the border. I’m a citizen of Romania, but not a romanian ethnic, so this gave me position to look at these issues without bias.
In Romania there is a small, nationalist movement that is pro-unification with Moldova. But this is a very small minority, regarded as extremists and do not command any authority whatsoever. Even more, Moldova is traditionally regarded as more trouble than its worth, so the subject only comes up in propaganda-style, old school, nationalistic rethoric.
Moldova is a whole different story. Their main problem, I think, is that they have lost their whole idea of identity, as a nation, as a country. The older generation is clearly lost somewhere in history, where Mother Russia rules supreme, and Moldova was part of the almighty CCCP. The young generation is even more confused. Many moldavian students come to Romania to study, and the romanian state provides them with scolarships and help. I talked with many of them, and the great majority, although young and studying in a democratic country, said “Romania is good, because we can use you. But at the end of the day, we are Moldavians, and our allegiance is with Russia”. Some, change their minds, but most do not. The results of the election are proof of this. Of course, the opposition parties claim fraud and such, but sadly, the reality is that most people voted for communists, because it is the only thing they know.
Also, Europe does not seem to see the danger hidden in a country like this. The communist government is only a very thin veil, over the huge problem of corruption, economic disaster and everything associated with this climate. Imagine a european country, bordering Nato, where you can openly buy assault rifles in the market?
Yes, pictures of demonstrations look great on TV. Weeee, a revolution. Hmmm, maybe, but not in Moldavia. A few hundred people in a rally does not change a thing. A few hundred thousand, in maybe a decade, could make a difference. We’ll see. I’ve got front seats to see it all.
20. pgalyen | 10.19.09
As a multi visitor from America to Moldova, I found the people to be good, down to earth and wanting to know what true democracy is. I found the people were selling every material thing to live and pay the rent. Most folks retained their dignity and continued with great morals and willing to help me get around the city safely. I truely like the Moldavian people. They see the west on TV and want the same, but say their government is rotten from the head down. Even so, they sent troops to Iraq!!
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1. Harry | 04.08.09
The murdering torturing hands of the CIA are behind the Moldova riots, no doubt.