There are different ways to interpret what has happened earlier today in the country of my birth, and the land where I spent the first 20 years of my life, Europe’s poorest country, the Republic of Moldova. Motivated by the allegedly falsified win of the Communist Party in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, the opposition organized riots in the city center of the country’s capital, Chisinau. Here’s a video:
I will not go into the analysis of why this sad event, organized with the help of Twitter and Facebook [read more in The New York Times], has taken place today. I have only one question to ask: Have the organizers of this really weighed all the pros and cons of doing it this way? If they did, they must be perceiving responsibility differently from how I view it. The parliament building was set on fire [video here], a woman suffocated to death, and over 100 people have been confirmed injured [source]. Much unnecessary damage has been caused today: to people, buildings [photos here], but most importantly, on a wider scale — to the political image of the whole country and its people.
Another good video on the subject (among other things, it shows you what was actually going on inside the Parliament building on April 7 2009):
Geno,
The organizers were communists themselves.
That was another opportunity to trash the opposition parties and arrest the most visible anti-communists.
Radu,
I’ve heard this version too. Somehow, I just don’t believe it. I’ve seen too many of similar “protests” being organized and paid for in the course of the years that I’ve continuously lived in Moldova (just 100 meters/yards down the street from the Parliament building) to believe in such an explanation of the situation. Additionally, in my opinion, too many people have been using “the communist authority” as an means to accomplishing their own goals lately. I will not go into this here. Let me just say this: as a citizen of Moldova looking at the situation from the outside, it seems to me that any politics aimed at being in confrontation with any of the neighboring countries will do no good to Moldova.