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.