Vladimir Voronin Marches in Like a Christian
// The Christian Democrats secured the election of a Communist as president of Moldova
The Elections
The parliament of Moldova elected the country's president yesterday. As expected, Vladimir Voronin, the incumbent president and leader of the Communist Party, obtained the majority needed for election. Both the Communists and many opposition members supported his candidacy, so that in the end, Voronin garnered even greater support (75 out of 101 votes) than he had in 2001, when the Communists had a constitutional majority in parliament. In the opinion of many observers, this outcome was made possible as a result of government bargaining with the opposition.
How to Make 61 out of 56
Under the constitution of Moldova, parliament elects the president. Three-fifths of the deputies' votes (61 out of 101) are needed for election. The Communist Party won 56 seats in the parliamentary elections on March 6, which was not enough for Vladimir Voronin's automatic reelection for a second term.
It is notable that some Communists initially interpreted this as a loss for the party. However, as a source in the president's administration explained to the Kommersant correspondent, these voting results had allowed Moldova to escape a “colored revolution”, since opponents had no grounds for accusing the government of falsifying the results.
The main intrigue in yesterday's election was how the Communists would be able to gather the missing number of deputies' votes. At first, the opposition factions in parliament – the Democratic Moldova bloc, with 34 seats, and the Christian Democratic People's Party, with 11 seats – declared they had no intention of nominating candidates for president and would not take part in the elections. Under these conditions, the Communists had to come up with alternative elections (the law makes no provision for an uncontested vote), and, in addition to Voronin, nominate one more candidate. He was Gheorghe Duca, the president of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.
At the same time, given that the probability of an agreement with the Christian Democrats was close to zero, the Communists started active negotiations with individual political leaders with the Democratic Moldova bloc. The fact is that the bloc, which absorbed a mixed bag of political forces, was never a stable, monolithic formation. The calculation proved to be correct. At the first session of the new parliament, a group of eight deputies broke away; and under the leadership fo Dmitry Dyakov, a co-chairman of the Democratic Moldova faction, they formed their own faction of the Democratic Party.
After that, deputies from the Democratic Party announced they would participate in the presidential elections, under certain conditions. They spoke of the need to depoliticize the office of president, modernize the Communist Party, promote democratic reforms in the country, integrate into the EU, and restore Moldova's territorial integrity with the participation of the United States, the EU, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. At the same time, Dyakov expressed regret that the opposition forces had not nominated their own candidates, thus depriving the remaining deputies of the opportunity of voting for a noncommunist candidate. Since none of the Democratic Party's conditions conflicted with the Communist Party's stated course, they were accepted for consideration. After that, it became perfectly clear that, by adding 8 Democrat votes to their 56, the Communists would ensure Voronin's reelection.
Several days before the elections, Democratic Moldova tried to reach an agreement with the government (incidentally, the faction changed its name to Our Moldova on Saturday. Last Thursday, after a meeting with Voronin, the faction's leader, Serafim Urekian, the mayor of Chisinau, announced 22 conditions under which his colleagues were willing to take part in the voting.
Many of Urekian's proposals had a sensational character. The wildest of these were a withdrawal from the CIS and a denunciation of the treaty on Moldova's entry into that organization; declaring the presence of Russian peacekeepers on Moldovan territory (referring to the Transdniestr) outside the law, and replacing them with UN blue berets, NATO, or the EU; a denunciation of the 1992 agreement with Russia on settling the Transdniestr problem; resolving the Transdniestr problem by granting the left bank of the Dniestr special status within the framework of a unitary state; abandoning neutrality and declaring a policy for integration into European, European-Atlantic, and other structures. We remind our readers that during the election campaign, Democratic Moldova positioned itself as a pro-Russian political formation and had Moscow's support.
In the president's administration, they called the opposition's demands provocation and did not take them into consideration. The mayor of Chisinau gave permission for a meeting of veterans of the armed conflict in Transdniestr, who had supported Democratic Moldova in the parliamentary elections. There were plans for nearly 2000 veterans to come to the parliament building to protest the election of a Communist president. However, on Sunday, Urekian was forced to revoke his order, because the capital's prosecutor objected to it. Nevertheless, a small group of veterans came to the parliament building yesterday. The protestors stood there for several hours without attracting any attention, and dispersed peacefully at the end of the parliamentary session. The threat of disorder was thus removed.
How to Make a Constitutional Majority out of a Simple One
The session itself was generally peaceful. There were two surprises. The first one occurred at the very beginning of the session, even before Speaker Marian Lupu presented the presidential candidates to the deputies, when three members of the Our Moldova faction announced they were leaving the faction. Then Voronin and Duca made program speeches, and the deputies went to the booths to vote, where the second, most important surprise of the day awaited deputies and journalists. Deputies from the right-wing Christian Democratic People's Party headed by Yury Roshka, who were implacable oppositionists, had taken part in the vote.
After the votes were counted, it was learned that 78 deputies had taken part in the elections. Seventy-five votes had been cast for Voronin, and 1 for Duca., with 2 ballots being declared invalid. Thus, even more deputies voted for Voronin than in 2001, when the Communists had a constitutional majority of 71 seats. As Voronin's only formal opponent, Duca, said after the vote, “it was as if a load had been taken off my mind.”
The result was unexpected even for the Communists. As Roshka explained later, the Christian Democrats had decided to participate in the vote after a meeting with Voronin on Sunday. According to Roshka, at the meeting the party leadership delivered their conditions to the future president, who agreed to them. The Christian Democrats' most important demands included guaranteeing the independence of the courts and the prosecutor's office, passing new laws on public media, and continuing the policy of European integration. Roshka admitted that it had not been easy to make the decision to take part in the elections, but it was in the interests of the entire country. He also openly announced that all 11 members of the faction had voted for Voronin.
Roshka commented on the fact that in recent years, the Communists under Voronin had made great strides in both foreign and domestic policy. He said this had been especially clear in 2003, when the president refused to sign a memorandum on settling the Transdniestr problem prepared by Moscow [the so-called Kozak memorandum], which, in his opinion, represented a de facto loss of independence for Moldova. “These aspects played a key role in our decision to support Voronin and his policies,” Roshka concluded.
Urekian called Voronin's election a betrayal of the country's interests. In his words, he had not expected this from his colleagues, stressing that there would come a time when they would have to answer to the people of Moldova for what had happened. However, a little later, the mayor was more conciliatory, noting that his faction would remain in opposition to the government, but at the same time intended to form constructive relations with it.
The inauguration of the reelected president is set for April 7. After that, Voronin will present his candidate for prime minister to parliament, and if the deputies confirm him, he will proceed to form a new cabinet of ministers. The composition of the government will be an indication of the concessions the opposition managed to obtain from the government for its participation in Voronin's reelection to a new term.
Vladimir Soloviev, Chisinau
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 05, 2005
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