European Union is on Guard, and Moldova Should Be, Too

The EU Observer published an interesting article on Moldova's role in the EU-Russia tensions. EU special envoy to Moldova, Kalman Mizsei, thinks that there are two scenarios for solving the Transnistrian problem: positive and negative - both with high stakes for EU and Russia. This means that EU keeps a strict eye on what's going on in Moldova in terms of Transnistrian conflict resolution, and will criticize, if not punish, any deviations from the "5+2" format of negotiations.

Today, an important event is taking place in Vienna: “Extraordinary Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe” (CFE), which was convened in short notice by Moscow. This event might have interesting outcomes, including for Moldova, about which Vladimir Socor writes in this article. There are 3 main groups of players. Russia is trying to persuade US and EU to waive the Istanbul convention requirement to withdraw its troops from the conflict zones (in Moldova and Georgia): Through shrill rhetoric and a little German help, Moscow hopes to break the Western policy of linking ratification of the adapted CFE Treaty with Russia’s fulfillment of the Istanbul Commitments, primarily on Moldova.

The NATO allies' proposal is "to accept a small number of Russian troops remaining in Moldova as part of an internationalized peacekeeping operation for a limited period of time. Russia would evacuate or scrap its ammunition stockpiles as well as withdrawing part of its troops. The internationalized operation would be a military one, though potentially reformable into an operation with greater civilian content later on."

And, finally, the official Moldovan delegation, in addition to internationalization, is to advance the idea of “civilianization” of the peacekeeping operation, which implies "turning the Russian military operation into an international mission of civilian and military observers, with some small military backup, under an international mandate."

The event will last until 15th of June, and the actual outcomes would be of great interest.

Later addition: "Moldova is key to this whole dispute between Russia and NATO," says an alliance diplomat. "If we can resolve the Moldova issue, the rest could fall into place." More on this issue here

Local Elections in Moldova Create Opportunities for Change

The general local elections in Moldova held on Sunday, June 3, brought about the following developments:

1.Overall participation in the elections was low in comparison with previous years, and represented 48%. In Chisinau City participation was even lower (30%)
2.Although still the top-choice of Moldovan electorate, the popularity of the ruling Communist party is declining. (From 40% of mayoral mandates in 2003 to 31% in 2007)
3.The next most popular opposition party is the “Our Moldova” Alliance with 17% of the mayoral mandates.
4.Chisinau City has a very real opportunity of bringing about change by electing a liberal mayor in the runoff elections on June 17. The communist candidate, Veaceslav Iordan, scored 28% while the liberal candidate, Dorin Chirtoaca, came in second with 24% of the total votes.
5.Chisinau witnessed a suprising emergence of a new Liberal Party.
6.Chisinau City council will be multi-partisan, the communists losing the comfortable majority. Out of 51 seats, the communists will have 16 (31%), the liberals – 11 (22%), and Our Moldova Alliance – 7 (14%). (Source)

Internet Governance in Moldova

This weekend, a new project was launched in Moldova Youth Leaders for Community Development through Internet Governance . It was funded by GKP, organized by CMB Training Center in partnership with DIPLO Foundation , APTI, RWCT, Better World JL Institute, AEGEE Beograd.

I participated along with other 14 Moldovan professionals from various areas in a 3-day workshop focused on Internet Governance (IG) issues in the world and their relevance for Moldova. The objective of this project is to create the core for a local IG community that would actively contribute to a meaningful development of Moldovan Internet resources, as well as their integration into the world wide web.

Although the workshop was merely the beginning of a comprehensive and multi-stakeholder analysis of IG challenges in Moldova, my initial conclusion is that the existing regulations – developed, but poorly enforced by the Ministry for Informational Development – are not targeting any particular needs or challenges, be it those of users, businesses, or those related to infrastructure and content. Rules and procedures seem to be developed in vacuum, and do not aim to curb specific negative externalities caused by a booming market or, on contrary, to encourage development of particular market niches or specific e-products and e-goods.

Dreaming of Chisinau City

Now that Moldova is living the frenzy of local elections, it is in vogue to talk about how Chisinau City can be transformed into a more beautiful, developed, comfortable, friendly European capital city. As many as 19 candidates to Chisinau Mayor’s Office are sharing their visions about Chisinau, so I thought the City’s residents and visitors could share their visions as well. I invite the readers of this blog who live and/or visited Chisinau to contribute with their own thoughts and ideas. Your contributions will be used by a Czech student studying Architecture in Italy who is preparing for his master thesis a project derived from a recently approved Chisinau Masterplan (or the General Urban Plan) which can be accessed here in Romanian.

I’ll go first. After traveling extensively in many cities, I think that Chisinau as a whole and its districts in particular lack an identity. It is a little bit of everything scattered everywhere. Therefore, some deal of organization will help. From commercial redevelopment perspective, it would be good to have clearly established functional areas where various industries (entertainment/showbusiness, cultural, fashion, mass-media, restaurants, public administration, international and non-profit organizations) can develop fast, and benefit from agglomeration effects. I’d like to see thematic locations, such as Newspapers’ Square, TV Center or Music Street, each with own unique identities. I’d like to be able to go clothes shopping in a beautiful pedestrian area with plenty of vegetation, fountains and street cafés.

Chisinau is a prisoner of cars, therefore I’d love to see Chisinau become a bicycle-friendly city. For the initial stage, it would be great to have specially-marked roads leading to the major parks and recreation areas. The Bic River is severely underdeveloped. As I live in its proximity, I wish it would be transformed into a modern well-lit riverside recreation area, or a romantic riverwalk with boats, cafes and nice little shops.

This is, briefly, Chisinau City of my dreams. Who's next?

Why Are the Brits Pessimistic about Moldova?

Monday started with two articles on Moldova in the British The Economist and Sunday Telegraph .

The Telegraph article is a variation on the same old topic: Transnistria and its role in the East-West relations, while The Economist deals with the Romanian-Moldovan relations. Perhaps the British media’s increased interest in this conflict zone is due to Moldova’s recently becoming an immediate Eastern neighbor of EU. Or, more realistically, the most recent Russian actions vis-à-vis Estonia put the decade-long Transnistrian conflict into a new perspective: Russia’s continuous interference into the internal affairs of an equally sovereign albeit much smaller and vulnerable country turned Transnistria into "an authoritarian regime under Russian occupation", "irritant to the US and the EU", "one of the worst thorns in the side of Europe and NATO", "serious political obstacle to Moldova's joining the EU". This historically-rooted mess aimed to strategically position Moscow in “some future East-West conflict”. Too bad for the half-million people living in Transnistria who are being manipulated in the worst possible way, …too bad for the other 3.5 million Moldovans who are viewed by the West as a “chunk of dirt-poor, ill-run, ex-communist nuisance”…

Although I wish something intelligent could be said to dilute the pessimistic image created by these two articles, no arguments seem to rush to mind.

Later addition It looks like The Economist is going to publish an entire series of diary-type-articles about Moldova. So much attention is really flattering :) Here you can read Tuesday part, or directly on the author's - Edward Lucas - blog .

Local Elections in Moldova: Wind of Change?

Local elections are scheduled to take place in Moldova on June 3. There are over 930 local governments in this 4-million-people country. Moldovans will elect the local council and mayors in the city/town/village of their residence. Local non-governmental (Coalitia 2007) and international organizations such as OSCE have already begun monitoring the electoral activity throughout the country.

The stakes of these elections are high and the outcomes – important for the future of the country as there is a slight hope for change in power. The Communist Party has been comfortably in power in the majority of local governments since the previous local elections of May 2003 when they gained 41% of mayoral mandates. The opposition parties – united in a social-liberal electoral structure called Our Moldova – gained 21 %, and the independent candidates – 17.5 %. Right before the 2003 elections, the mostly-Communist Parliament, Communist central government and President have initiated the highly controversial reform of the 2nd tier of government.

The Communist Party still has a very strong hold on power in Moldova. Although I would like to see the opposition parties grow much stronger than they are today, the results of the upcoming elections are hardly going to be much different than those of the previous ones.

How a War Monument Can Cause a Diplomatic Crisis

The Estonian-Russian diplomatic crisis has rapidly escalated in the last days. The government of Estonia – an independent EU country, formerly a Soviet republic – makes a decision to relocate a World War II monument - the Bronze Soldier – from the downtown to a place in the outskirts of the city of Tallinn. Common sense tells me that, whatever the reasons, this is a type of decision that a government of an independent country (even of a city government) should have enough authority to make without having to consider the possibility of infuriating the government of another country. However, when we talk of Russia, common sense is rarely a guiding principle. The current diplomatic crisis between Russia and Estonia shows how Russian high government officials make offensive, unjustified and destabilizing declarations addressing another country’s government and, by representation, its citizens.

Here is an Vladimir Socor’s article on the situation.

In another article he reveals the elements of the sophisticated Kremlin’s assault:

They include cyber attacks from within Russia’s Presidential Administration against the Estonian presidency’s and government’s electronic communications; political demands, backed by economic sanctions threats, to change the Estonian government; siege laid by Kremlin-created organizations to the Estonian Embassy in Moscow; and instigatory coverage of the April 27-29 violent riots of Russian youth in Tallinn by Russia’s state television.

Also, he warns that Moscow’s goal is not what it might appear:

...Moscow’s operational goal is not to elicit condemnation of Estonia or Latvia. It is, rather, to portray these Baltic states as irritants to the West’s relations with Russia and to induce Western governments to remain silent, instead of supporting the Baltic states against such bullying. Moscow hopes to draw wedges among Western allies through protracted application of this tactic.