Perhaps some of you have heard, but the often forgotten country of the Republic of Moldova has been in disarray lately admidst rioting over the results of the parliamentary elections. Moldova shares a border with Romania and up until WWII was part of Romania in the region known as Bassarabia. The Moldovan flag is similar to the Romanian flag, only difference being that the Moldovan flag also features their coat of arms. In addition, the main language is Moldovan (basically a dialect of the Romanian language). Thus, there has always been a desire by many Romanians to see Moldova one day reunite with Romania. Following WWII, Moldova became one of the most isolated republics of the former USSR, and thus, Russian was introduced to the populace. To this day, Moldova remains Europe's only remaining "communist" country (though you could make the argument that many of the former Eastern bloc countries are still to a degree communist). It is a land-locked country of 5 million people and Europe's poorest. To many Romanians, it will always be a part of Romania--for some Moldovans, they have no interest in ever reunifying with Romania.
When the results came back that the communists had won over a 50 percent majority, riots erupted and cries of corruption were shouted. The truth? I agree with those who say that the results are true. I think the communists did win. Why? Because there is still a hefty majority of Moldovans who have lived their whole lives under communism, have never traveled out of Moldova and they actually like the security that communism offers (a job, a home, everyone the same, etc.). It is the younger generations, who have been exposed to the freedoms of the West and anti-communist sentiments who simply cannot understand how the older generations would ever want a communist state. It is sad, but you have to understand the sentiments--communism is all they have ever known. And to a degree, they have seen their Romanian brothers and sisters on their pensions, lose a whole life's savings overnight in the switch to capitalism---their thinking is that "at least communism will protect me--I am used to it and it doesn't bother me....I don't know what capitalism would bring." That is the mentality. For the youth, they want the opportunity to travel, to earn a decent living, and to integrate with the EU. Here lies a classic example of the clash between the two generations---one that has known nothing but communism and one that wants nothing to do with it. Thus, the youth have resorted to protesting, and unfortunately it has gotten quite violent.
The blame? Already the Rep. of Moldova and the Russians blame patriotic sentiments in Romania for the protests. Already the Romanian Ambassador has been asked to leave and the Rep. of Moldova is once again requiring all Romanians to have a visa to cross the Prut River. Sad! This affects my team because we are starting to do a lot more work in Moldova. Please pray for an end to the violence and for the relations between the two countries to improve.
For more details, please read the following article: http://images.google.ro/imgres?imgurl=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00518/moldova_smoke_518352a.jpg&imgrefurl=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6052601.ece&usg=__Nlh8ZbkskjR7LQC1zh_Las7ug-M=&h=350&w=585&sz=64&hl=ro&start=4&tbnid=FfnFnulpJT4dIM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprotesting%2Bin%2Bmoldova%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dro
2 comments:
Amazing that you hear nothing about this on the nightly news in the States.
Craig
Actually you are not 100% right. A lot of people voted with the Communist Party, but 50%. There are a lot of reports of fraud. The most famous was a woman, whose husband was dead, her son was in Japan, and went she went to vote she saw on the lists that her husband and son had already voted :( Apparently 100.000 dead people voted and this could go on.... So they were right about the fraud.
Post a Comment