(Er... sorry... wrong country, wrong Kossacks?)I thought I might bring you a little perspective on the rioting that is occurring in Moldova. Moldova has been a sister country to the State of North Carolina since 1999. Mrs. Dood and I are here on a mostly working vacation. We arrived on Saturday and thought it'd be interesting to see the elections that occurred on Sunday. We actually got to see our translator vote Sunday night at the polling place and it was very quiet and without incident. Little did we know that the young people here would become very upset with the results and stage the protests that have escalated. The BBC seems to have pretty good coverage... in a nutshell most of the young, college kids or otherwise, descended upon the capitol, Chisinau this morning. They were upset over the election results in which the Communists retained power with supposedly around 50% of the vote. The remainder of the vote was split throughout 9- 12 factional Democratic parties which were unable to unite. The students are convinced that the election was stolen and want the president to resign and have another election.
I have pictures that I took early today, unfortunately my memory stick adapter for my laptop has disappeared. It doesn't matter, because my pictures are pretty boring and just show some of the students beginning to congregate this morning. The talks that we gave today where very poorly attended and the protest turned out to be the reason. Throughout the day there were many rumors of fatalities and injuries but it was impossible to verify anything, but it does appear that the students were able to overtake security and police, and succeeded in sacking and burning parts of their parliament and equivalent president’s offices. A truce was achieved late in the day, and things seemed to have calmed down. About eight o’clock tonight, Mrs Dood and I walked towards the square, and the main street was blocked off with a few hundred people still chanting at the steps of the main government office across from their "Arch".
You can click through the link provided to get yourself up to speed on the story, but the gist is that Moldova is the poorest orphaned country in Europe. It was split from Romania and annexed by the USSR after WWll. It was heavily settled and indoctrinated into the communist system until the USSR split up. As a result, most Moldovans still identify themselves as Romanians and long for reunification, and eventual entry into the EU. Problem is that the Romanians don’t want them because of their poverty. A significant part of the country would also like to return to what they view as the stability supplied by the Former Soviet Union. Russia now keeps the country at a distance, but on a short leash through its power over the country’s energy resources.
The end result is a country in which the young people see almost no hope for a future. Not only the young, but their parents and elders... Many children are left behind with extended families, or outright abandoned as their parents immigrate to other countries in an effort to find jobs. Moldova had a population of well over 4 million, and now many estimate that over one million have gone.
From a personal perspective, the people here are very friendly and helpful, and Chisinau is a beautiful but terribly exhausted and run down city. I had the experience of riding a city bus yesterday (for around $.10) and the ticket taker kept smiling and staring at me. Our translator told us that we were the first Americans that he had ever seen, and that they had all been taught by the Soviets from birth that all Americans were "Dark and Evil". At the same time, there are so many people begging in the streets, that you become very jaded very quickly to them. Corruption is also rampant at all levels of society, and it is almost understood as a way of life.
Fascinating to me, today, were the students who politely returned to our afternoon talks despite the escalation of events and rumors of the Army being sent in. Mrs Dood and I were adamant that they should return to express themselves in the streets and be with their friends. I sincerely wished them good fortune and expressed that I hoped no one would get hurt. To a person, and to my shock, they all said that their safety was not important at this point. They all said repeatedly that they were so glad that they now had the right to protest in the first place, as opposed to the past under the Soviets, and were not going to return to that system.
We are scheduled to visit other cities for the rest of this week, provided that things calm down and travel doesn’t become restricted. This has been a fascinating and educating trip thusfar... I’ll try to update!