| THE SUSPENSE CONTINUES IN THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA 20/08/2009 |
| (2009-08-20) |
| Last updated: 2009-08-24 16:34 EET |
Things are quiet for the moment in the Republic of Moldova, pending the upcoming meeting on the 28th of August of the new Moldovan parliament resulting from the early elections held last month.
The Parliament meeting was called by Moldova’s incumbent communist president, Vladimir Voronin. The MPs will have to choose a speaker, form a new government and elect a successor to Voronin, who has already served the two terms allowed by the Constitution. At first sight, the third point seems an impossible task. The new president needs the votes of 61 of Parliament’s 101 MPs. Still the strongest political group in the Republic, the pro-Russian communists have 48 votes. The opposition, which brings together the Liberals, the Liberal Democrats, the Democrats and Our Moldova Alliance, can only count on 53 votes.
Under the circumstances, some analysts are expecting a prolonged political deadlock similar to the one which led to a repeat of the legislative elections in April. Under the Constitution, a new failure to elect a president will again lead to early elections, most likely at the beginning of 2010.
Unfortunately, this is a luxury that Europe’s poorest state should not be able to afford from a political, moral and financial point of view. What’s worse, after last spring’s elections, when the communists were accused they’d rigged the ballot to help the Voronin regime, and especially after the beastly police actions against the anti-communist protesters, the two sides will find it difficult to negotiate. Not even the 4-party alliance for European integration was able to provide some concrete information about the number of ministries and the membership of the government they are trying to form.
The communists, on the other hand, say that the result of the elections gives them the moral and political right to claim at least one major office, an idea which has been explicitly rejected by the leaders of the opposition. Moreover, Voronin’s people want to deprive the Alliance of the pleasure to give the new president, and threaten to vote only for an independent.
In a nutshell, the suspense continues, and no scenario can be ruled out. Not even the possibility for the opposition to realize that, even though it won the elections, it cannot win government too, in the face of such an experimented and cynical adversary like the communists.
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2025-04-03
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