April 2009 Elections in Moldova: What it Took Communists to “Win”?

On the wave of continuous accusations launched by opposition parties and civil society organizations that the Parliamentary elections in Moldova (April 2009) were rigged, and that ODIHR/OSCE Observation Mission failed to do its job, I would like to get back to an article of mine, published by Transitions Online on 4 December 2008. That piece emphasized few ideas that months latter proved to be somewhat prophetic. Among them was the idea that OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights elections observation methodology became an archaic relic of the post-Cold War period, when the West was eager to teach the hungry-for-democracy post-Soviet countries how to run the electoral process.

However, since the mid 90s that methodology did not change, while the “naive” politicians in post-Soviet countries started to use state-of-the-art PR and social engineering techniques, which allowed them to fool the West, ODIHR, and use election process for legitimizing the continuous stay in power of their regimes. Obviously, with each additional electoral cycle that way of running elections lead to the annihilation, little by little, even of the primitive checks and balances that started to take shape in the political systems of some former USSR republics. But I won’t say a word more – here comes that article.

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Elections: False Hope

by Dumitru Minzarari
4 December 2008

Voting is losing its utility and value in ex-Soviet countries as rigging elections becomes routine practice for incumbent governments.

Elections have long been the flagship of the West’s democratization efforts worldwide. The West continues to see elections as a litmus test for measuring the advance of democracy in a country. This view has held even when significant resources invested into the liberalization of ex-Soviet

Moscow is Still the Master – the complete version of the TOL article

That is a more complete version of the “Moscow is Still the Master” article, published by the Transitions Online recently.

Moscow is Still the Master

A hazy statement designed in the Kremlin exposes the flaws in the conflict-resolution format for Moldova’s separatist territory.

Moldovan presidents have always been notorious for their personal approach to negotiations with Moscow, resulting usually in sound, long-lasting, and humiliating diplomatic defeats. Their Soviet-type leadership style – all three were former high-level apparatchiks – partly explains this foreign policy behavior. Historic feelings of inferiority toward the Kremlin have plagued the Moldovan political class since the country gained independence in 1991.

Eighteen years later, the lame-duck president Vladimir Voronin who is loosing his office after the 5 April parliamentary elections in Moldova, has stepped on the same rake. On 18 March, less than a month before elections won by his Communist Party yesterday, he signed a common declaration with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the secessionist Transdniester leader Igor Smirnov. Quickly tagged

Is Russian TV Channel preparing another disinformation on Moldovan protests?

Today I answered to the questions of “Russia” TV Channel on the recent youth anti-communist protests. Apparently the interview will be imputed into a bigger special edition on Moldovan anti-communist protests to be aired tomorrow evening. There are few curious things about that particular interview – the Russian journalist was too much insistent to get it, when I was not able to meet them yesterday, his colleague sent a crew to meet me today. As I am not the biggest newsmaker in Moldova, and not even the medium-sized one, that persistence has puzzled me.

That is not everything. The Russian journalist was very much eager to film me next to a computer and I was initially even suggested that we go to an Internet cafe for that purpose. As the Moldovan protests were nicknamed by some Western observers “Twitter revolution”, and as the main topic of the interview was supposed to be “the role of Internet on mobilizing the Moldovan protesters”, one may draw the conclusion that “Russian” TV Channel would like to cook another big

EU diplomats in Moldova: Protests? What Protests!?!?

Calm down, they did not say exactly this – it is just some irony, describing the behavior of EU ambassadors in Moldova during the youth anti-communists protests in recent days. However the details below are just as interesting.

European Union diplomats are just doing nothing in Moldova – they are the symbol of EU’s impotent foreign policy in that part of the world, the symbol of nothing-doingness. Regardless of the efforts of some EU believers (Nicu Popescu with his very good article on how EU should intervene) everyone to the West seemed bored and uninterested. During the protests days EU ambassadors kept quiet, while Russia has made a number of harsh statements and actions infringing on Moldovan sovereignty (Russia MFA – “elections results are in the interest of the Moldovan and Russian people”, Foreign Minister Lavrov – something like ‘I don’t see any reason for repeated elections’, sending experts and equipment to help the government crackdown on youth protests, using Russian media to dispel the real reasons behind the protests – rigged elections – while promoting the false idea that protests were not numerous and were organized by a bunch of drugged, drunk, and overwhelmed by hatred radicals).

EU ambassadors to Moldova (with a tiny bit of exception) kept quiet when more and more facts about rigged elections came up, as they probably thought if they accept that then this could discredit OSCE and EU. Of course it will discredit if you will wait longer, since at the moment there is still a honorable way out, as the final ODIHR’s conclusions were not yet released. In due time, the OSCE ODIHR election observation mission issued a preliminary statement the first page of which (and the only page the majority reads) was very positive despite the numerous violations that affected the election results. That statement and the press-conference (also very laudatory) were used by Moldovan communists to claim “OSCE recognized and approved our elections”. The latter (EU) was quick

Update: Anti-Communist Protests in Chisinau

The government-controlled media and the Russian media offices in Moldova offer a pro-Communist coverage of the protests. They report protesters are looting the Parliament building, taking out computers and other goods. While this cannot be excluded, it will certainly offer opportunities for Parliament inhabitants to take home goods, and then blame it on protesters.

Few minutes ago on the live broadcast offered by the ProTV Moldova Channel protesters brought from the Parliament porno-magazines, showing it in front of the camera, and saying “look how hard-working are our MPs”. They made jokes that the magazine was taken from the office of the Communist MP V. Stepanyuk.

There are reports, that police is blocking vehicles with opposition protesters at the outskirts of the city, coming from the regions to join the protests in Chisinau. At the border with Romania, Moldovan border-guards have obstructed the entrance into Moldova of groups of people from Romania.Police has also used teargas and water canons, however was not able to stop the protesters.

It is believed there are over 80 injured people, among them 50

Урок российского миротворчества для главы германского МИДа Штайнмайера

Или из-за летних каникул, или по причине негодности, но я так и не получил ответа от некоторых редакций насчет опубликования этой моей статьи, написанной (на английском) еще неделю назад. И чтоб тема совсем не стала из новости старостью, тем более что пора уже писать новую статью о американской инициативе, я решил опубликовать ее на блоге. Любопытную точку зрения (на русском) еще можно прочитать на блоге украинского журналиста Виталия Портникова. И еще одна статья другого пользователяп livejournal, по ее словам не журналиста а публициста, рассказывает о грузинской армии и о ситуации вокруг конфликтов в Грузии.

Моя статья ниже указывает что в Грузии и особенно в Молдавии мы имеем дело с нетрадиционными конфликтами, которые больше по своей природе политические, отражая свойства proxy-wars. И по этим причинам традиционны методы разрешения конфликтов могут быть эффективными только в тандеме с действиями, которые адресуют эти нетрадиционные характеристики. Одним из таких действий может быть инициатива провести международный “аудит” миротворческих операций в Грузии и Молдове на предмет их соответствия общепризнанным миротворческим стандартам ООН и международной практики. Ведь российские лидеры не раз гордо заявляли о том, что Россия соблюдает международное право, в отличии от других. Может настало время проверить эти заявления на деле?

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GEORGIA: minister steinmeier receives his lesson of russian peacekeeping

The recent peace-keeping efforts of the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in the Northern Caucasus did not create big illusions to anyone familiar with the subject of the post-Soviet conflicts. Talking to the media Steinmeier himself admitted that his main goal was to diffuse the severe tension in the region. It mounted up after a series of bomb blasts in Abkhazia, and a Moscow-acknowledged intentional violation of the Georgian airspace over the rebel region of South Ossetia by the Russian ground-attack aircrafts.

Still, this does not completely explain the reason for this tour. Minister Steinmeier came up with a peace-plan proposal addressing the conflict between Georgia and its breakaway region of Abkhazia. He had to be fully aware that this initiative had very few chances of being accepted by Russia. However German diplomat still brought it up in what looked like a futile effort.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has voiced a clear position in the phone conversation with Steinmeier on 15 July, just before the latter’s visit to Caucasus started. Lavrov stated that Georgia was to sign a non-use of force pledge and remove its Ministry of Interior forces from the Kodori