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| LOCAL ELECTIONS IN THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA(18.06.2007) |
| (2007-06-18) |
| Last updated: 2007-06-19 20:36 EET |
Chisinau remains a no-entry area for the communists. The second round of the local elections in the Republic of Moldova (a former Soviet, predominantly Romanian-speaking republic) has confirmed the electorate’s rejection of the pro-Moscow government party, which has never gathered enough votes to control Chisinau’s town hall.
The communists’ candidate, Veaceslav Iordan, only got 40% of the vote, trailing by 20% behind the Liberal Party candidate, Dorin Chirtoaca. Only 29 years old, the latter became the mayor of the biggest, the richest and politically most important city of all the republic’s towns. Quite atypical when compared to Moldovan public life standards, Chirtoaca is nonetheless a figurehead for the new generation of politicians.
He did not complete his education in Moscow, but in neighboring Romania where for a while he used to work for the state-run television. A civic activist, he never ceased to denounce, in Bucharest as well as in Chisinau, the communist power’s anti-democratic actions. Fully aware of the linguistic, historical and cultural communion between the two countries, Chirtoaca has neither hesitations nor complexes to declare himself an ethnic Romanian.
His dynamism persuaded all the center and right-of center candidates who were defeated in the first ballot to support him, urging their electorate to vote for him. And that, analysts say, is a sign that, at the next legislative election, the democratic parties may work together to send the still almighty communists in opposition, all the more so as the communists’ popularity rating has been falling rapidly.
From 50% at the ballot four years ago, the communists have only got 34% in the local councils and about 30% in town halls. The rest of the options was disseminated between the centrist political parties, dominated by the Our Moldova Alliance and the Democratic Party, and the Liberal and Christian-Democratic right wing, respectively, the last two being avowedly pro-western. Communist leader and head of state Vladimir Voronin’s disappointment must have been enhanced by the humiliation he had to suffer at the hands of the Russian-speaking separatists in Trans Dniester (in the east).
Quite ostentatiously, the latter chose to undermine the elections right in the President’s native commune, Corjova, where in both ballots they devastated the polling station, molested the guarding policemen as well as the citizens who wanted to cast their votes, and also detained some of the candidates. To Voronin the incident would have been meant to trigger an armed conflict. In which, somehow logically and predictably in such a scenario, the separatists would have been supported by people from Moldova and Russia. And illogically yet absolutely predictably, also from Romania, considering the communist President’s Romania–phobia.
(Bogdan Matei)
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