Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

Before I say anything else- let’s get things straight. I am by no means an authority on Moldovan politics. I’ve only been there once ( so far..), and the National Assembly for Wales hopes to establish links with the country and with the National Assembly of Gagauzia. I am posting on this issue as I am genuinely interested in what is happening there, and am eager to introduce readers who potentially may never have heard of Moldova to that which is happening in the country. Right, that’s off my chest.

So, reports today state that the OSCE are generally pleased with how the elections were run. This despite what I have said in a previous post about individual members of the OSCE voicing their misgivings. What is true however is that there has been a hard line response to alleged Romanian involvement in the protests that took place in Chisinau- Moldova has imposed a visa regime on Romanians, is expelling Romania’s ambassador, and entry to Romanian journalists. From this website(Association for Participatory Democracy) we are told that-

‘The Party of Communists (PCRM) won the April 5, 2009 parliamentary elections with 49.48% of the valid votes cast. Central Electoral Commission (CEC) made public the official results on Wednesday, April 8. The same data shows that three other political parties have passed the electoral threshold of 6%: Liberal Party (PL) with 13.14% of the valid votes cast, Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) — 12.43% and the “Moldova Noastra” Alliance with 9.77%. Voters from abroad had other preferences. Thus, out of 16 914 Moldovan citizens who voted at the 33 polling stations opened within the Moldovan diplomatic missions, 45.51% chose PL, 24.88% voted PLDM, PCRM took 8.53% and AMN — 7.92% of the votes cast. The remaining electoral contestants have gathered less than 6% of the votes cast. PSD got 3.7%, PPCD — 3.03%, PD — 2.97%, UCM — 2.75% and MAE — 1.01%. For the remaining political parties and independent candidates have voted less than 1% of electors. A total of 1 555 577 voters out of over 2.5 million eligible voters took part in the voting. 61 votes of the members of Parliament are required to elect the new president of the country.’

..which means that the Communists will need to gather support from other parties to elect a President, which may be hard given that they are contesting the result. My sources in Moldova ( no- not via twitter or Facebook) tell me that the votes will be recounted, and that there will possibly be a second election.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International has waded in to the affair, by stating that  ‘civil society activists should not be held responsible for the rioting that took place the day after a peaceful youth protest action on 6 April in the Moldovan capital of Chişinău. If found guilty, they could face up to eight years’ imprisonment. Read the whole article here.

I’ll continue to watch what is happening in Moldova via twitter, facebook, the web, news articles- all of which provide information on the situation from differing angles. I believe that another protest is being organised tomorrow, which organisers are calling the ‘Flower Revolution‘ as they are asking people to turn up with flowers in their hands to show that their protest is nonviolent. The comments section of the blog organising the protest has already attracted some negative comments- they are accused of being naive if they expect the protest to be peaceful. Nevertheless, people wanting to attend are being warned on twitter to ’stay away from provocations’….