[BRIEF NOTE] Moldova's Twitter Revolution

[rfmcdonald]

I'm a bit embarrassed to have missed the news of the recent political unrest in Moldova, with students storming the Moldovan parliament buildings in response to a disputed election when the Communists gained a majority in parliament. Thanks to nhw for letting us know with two useful blog links, like this one.

Moldova held parliamentary elections on 5th April. The Communist president Voronin whose second term is about to end is bound by the Constitution to stand down. But in the latest election, his ruling Communist party is reported to have obtained 50% of the vote, which would give it 61 out of 101 members of parliament. This would allow the party to consolidate its control of the political system by electing the president, the speaker and the prime-minister. Commentators claim that Vladimir Voronin will try to remain a de facto head a state by taking the position of speaker of parliament.

The election campaign was full of abuses, including the harassment of opposition parties and media by the police and the office of the prosecutor general. However, the election day itself seems to have taken place without major irregularities. Unlike in Russia or Belarus all the opposition parties were allowed to vote, and the Central Electoral Commission was relatively impartial.

As a result of the protests, the government cut internet access, opposition websites were suspended, the mobile telephony network in the centre was taken off the air, and the national public TV showed ignored the protests most of the day. Russia is currently trying to portray the crisis as a coup d’etat staged by Western and Romanian intelligence services, and is offering the Communist government a supporting hand.

Leena Roa at TechCrunch is one of several observers to cal what's going on in Moldova a "Twitter Revolution".

Students in Moldova are using Twitter as a tool to mobilize opposition against a communist victory in Moldovian elections. According to reports, close to 10,000 protesters gathered at Moldova’s parliament in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital and were able to eventually break through police lines to storm into the building. From looking at the tweets on the subject, it appears that the demonstration turned into a violent coup attempt.

In the last 48 hours, students from Moldova have been tweeting, trying to rally others into demonstrating against the communists. If you look under the search terms “pman” (stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, a square in Chisinau) or “Chisinau,” you can see the tweets about the demonstration coming in a rapid pace. There are also videos on YouTube of the protest. There have been reports that there is limited cellphone reception in the square (thought to have been turned off by authorities). So protesters are using Twitter to give live updates via GPRS networks on their mobile devices.

Moldova's history since it gained independence in 1991 has been grim, with the economy collapsing, the Communist political class continuing to remain in power, and the country partitioned between the Moldovan government and the Russophone separatists of Transnistria. I blogged back in 2005 about how Moldova's chief export was its working-age population; Moldovan emigrants are present in large numbers throughout the former Soviet Union and southern Europe, even in Romania. Moldova's relationships with foreign countries are under strain. These events are testing relations with Romania, Moldova's neighbour and from 1919 to 1940 the country with which Moldova was united.

Anti-government riots in Moldova have inflamed a long-standing diplomatic row with Romania, complicating Bucharest's goal to prod its smaller neighbour towards closer ties with the European Union.

Supporting EU membership aspirations in the region, particularly of Moldova with which it shares strong cultural and ethnic ties, has been a key part of Romania's strategy to carve out a role as a regional leader since it joined the EU in 2007.

Relations have grown tenser since Romania joined the bloc and this week's protests have exposed deeply entrenched differences within Moldova, Europe's poorest state, over its relationship with the West.

On Wednesday, Moldova accused Romania of stoking the violence, threw out its ambassador and closed border crossings.

Bucharest said it was "indignant" about President Vladimir Voronin's accusations and said it would continue to support closer Moldovan ties with the EU.

The interest in Romanian-Moldovan uniification in the early 1990s soon passed, with Romanian-Moldovan relations thereafter marred by Romanian insistence that a special relationship between the two countries and Moldovan suspicions of their much larger Romanophone neighbour. Russia is likewise concerned, not least because Moldova has traditionally fallen within the Russian sphere of influence. The European Union is also involved, with its Eastern Partnership highlighting Moldova and five other former Soviet republics as privileged partners.