Friday 10 April 2009

Is Romania part of the European Union?

This is a really slim and really incomplete description of the events turning really bad for Romania and severely bad for Moldavian civilians.
  • Moldavia calls his ambassador from Romania
  • the peaceful protests turn violent on Tuesday (while Voronion recognised for Ria Novostni that they allowed the protesters to control for a day the Presidential building and the Parliament (in Romanian)
  • Moldavia accuses Romania without any proof of implication in the events in Moldavia
  • The Romanian ambassador Filip Teodorescu, and the Counseling Minister of the Romanian Embassy in Moldova, Gabriel Gaboran, are declared persona non grata in Moldavia; Romania can't do the same since the Moldavian ambassador is not in the country
  • Vladimir Voronin announces visas will be introduced for Romanians (an abussive measure since the EU should have been announced of such a measure with 48 hours in advance)
  • Romanian authorities respond by:
    • a ferm denial of the unproven accusations - from what I have seen CNN and Euronews simply don't accurately represent the declaration, and the texts put under quotes - the word "provocation" - imply that the Romanian position is not honest
    • they declared that they will NOT declare the Moldavian ambassador as a persona non grata and that the regime of gratuitous visas for the Moldavian citizens will not change
  • EU DOES NOT ANSWER AT ALL TO THIS ABUSE AGAINST EU CITIZENS
  • Wednesday protests are quiet but media access is highly restricted and inaccurate information is aired through the national Moldavian Television
    • Romanian journalists from Antena 3 were harassed, followed and, fearing for their safety, they appealed OSCE authorities in Moldavia to be able to leave the country safely
  • Wednesday and Thursday many arrests occur in Moldavia and the Romanian officials requested the Moldavian officials to tell them if among the arrested people are any Romanian citizens; no answer was provided by the Moldavian authorities
  • France, Sweden and Czehia and some other EU members declare that they "understand the complexity of the relation sensible issue between Romania and Moldavia" and appeal to Moldavia to rebound the diplomatic relation with Romania - WHAT? In Diplomatic lingo that seems to mean something like "we know Romanians are idiots, but please, Moldavian authorities, let's get back to dialogue"
  • Today, Friday 10, the Moldavians are called to protests and the authorities are authorized to use real ammunition
    • Teachers, university administration personnel, opposition representatives announce that people should not attend the protests and measures will be taken against anyone allowing people (mostly youngsters) to attend the protests
  • Russia declares that "the EU has a member state that hasn't clearly delimited its borders" which obviously refers to Romania, thus attacking Romania and alleging that Romania has unionist expansions; EU DOESN'T DO ANYTHING!
Are we living in a parallel world? What interests would Romania have to ever consider that it would be involved in this? Moldavia is the poorest country in Europe, has huge problems with justice, corruption, criminal activity, social security, border security (Transdnistria) and other issues which Romania does NOT want to import since we're already in a bad position by ourselves!


WHAT THE HELL IS EU DOING? Romania is a member of the EU and it seems all the attacks against Romania are not addressed in any way by the EU, on the contrary, EU members either assist passively, look the other way or even allow us to understand that indeed they think Romania is involved.

Thursday 9 April 2009

About the protests in Moldavian Republic

Many people in the western world are completely unaware that in the Moldavian Republic there is an ongoing protest against the current Communist Party which is at power after the parliamentary elections held on Sunday. The protestants accuse the Communists of election fraud and there are numerous reports of dead people being recorded as voters, people which, by religion, chose not to vote, and other several people which couldn't have voted.

Tuesday the protests took a violent turn, apparently "aided" by some instigators which were reported to be seen as recording the protesters, taking notes and, generally, not fitting the picture. During the day the national television broadcasted absolutely no information on the events, and aired documentaries, cartoons and no news on any of the protests. To me, this looked very much alike what the Romanian Television aired during the Romanian Revolution in December '89 when during the fights in the streets of Bucharest the Television aired no images from the centre of Bucharest.

But, back to Moldavia, at the end of the day, sadly, the Parliament and Presidency buildings were devastated, making it easy for the Communist leaders to produce some disinformation propaganda based on real footage.

Yet again, sadly, but it seems under the protection of some of the aforementioned instigators, the flags of the EU and Romania were waved at the highest levels of the Parliament building during the time the protesters allegedly took over that building (there were several reports that the Police forces actually simply let them in, without actually needing/being forced to do that; also the passivity of the policemen seen in the footage from Romanian televisons was obvious).

As many Moldavian students live and study in Romania, some of them wanted to go home and take part at the protests happening in Chișinău. To their surprise, many of them were denied the right to enter their home country. Many, if not all, Romanian journalists were also denied access in the country accusing alternatively technical issues, lack of proper papers (although only the passport or the ID card was officially required), lack of safety, or simply refusing without reason.


Today, the Moldavian president Voronin, accused Romania as being behind the manifestations in Chișinău, Moldova's capital and said it will declare as a persona non grata the Ambasador of Romania in Moldova, and thus forcing him to leave Moldova within 24 hours. He went even further and said that visas will be required from now on for Romanian nationals. As soon as this was announced, it was one of the most invoked reasons by the Moldavian customs as a rejection reason, although, according to Moldavian Embassy officials in Romania, no rules or procedure were known for the release of visas for Romanian nationals.

Also, during Wenesday, Moldavian crossing points were opened and closed alternatively but incosistently accros the entire border for Moldavian nationals. Romanian nationals were denied in most cases (although some Romanian truck drivers were reported as allowed to cross). At some point during the day the Moldavian officials from the customs told the Moldavian students awating at the border that they are offered access on the condition they go direclty home with the buses provided by the Moldavian customs and were warned that going to Chișinău wasn't a smart choice for them. Some of the information from students which managed to enter their home country suggested that is advisable to not enter the country since they were going to be denied of the right to leave the country later, when they were to return to Romania to their studies (after Easter).

What's sadder is that the Moldavian voting system is built in such a way that the vote counting, in the end is done by Government officials behind closed doors, inside a Ministry. OTOH, the international official observed the things which happend in public, but did not see any of the dead voter lists (since they were not present when those votes were casted), and declared the vote as mostly legal and without major or significant incidents.


According to the media, before the elections, the Communists were credited with 35-37% of the votes in an independent poll, while in the exit poll conducted by the Communists themselves they were credited with 42-45% of the votes. In the end the last official partial results credited them with approximately 51% of the votes.

About Vladimir Voronin, it is a known fact that he has double citizenship, Moldavian and Russian and is a reserve general within the Russian Army and currently has a pretty nice pension from the Russian state.


All I can say is that, although the Moldavians' desire to have a real democracy is a legal and reasonable request, the western world chose, due to the international circumstances, to look the other way around and not to incommodate Russia in any way. Moreover, to accuse Romania to have unionist desires an act upon those desires is planly stupid since now Romania is part of the EU and Moldova uniting with Romania is simply impossible now, since Moldavia's economy would sunk even more the fragile and regressing Romanian economy and Romania would instantly fail the EU requirements which would mean disaster for us.