Moldova

Country in east-central Europe, bounded north, south, and east by Ukraine, and west by Romania.

Government

The 1994 constitution provides for a president and a 104-member national assembly, both elected by universal suffrage for a five-year term. The president appoints a prime minister from the assembly membership, and a council of ministers on the prime minister's advice.

History

Formerly a principality in Eastern Europe, occupying an area divided today between the republic of Moldova and modern Romania, the region was independent from the 14th to the 16th century, when it became part of the Ottoman Empire. Its eastern part, Bessarabia, was ruled by Russia 1812-1918, but then transferred to Romania. Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia in June 1940 and it was joined with part of the Soviet-controlled Autonomous Moldavian Republic to form the Moldavian Socialist Republic in August 1940.

Nationalist revival

Before and after World War II the republic was brutally ‘sovietized’. Collectivization in agriculture and seizure of private enterprises coincided with the infiltration of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians into the area. The republic witnessed significant urban and industrial growth from the 1950s. Glasnost brought a resurgence of Moldavian nationalism from the late 1980s, and there was pressure for language reform and reversion from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. In 1988 a Moldavian Movement in Support of Perestroika was formed and a year later, in May 1989, the Moldavian Popular Front (MPF) was established. In August 1989 the MPF persuaded the republic's government, led since July 1989 by the sympathetic communist president Mircea Snegur, to make Romanian the state language and reinstate the Latin script. This provoked demonstrations and strikes by the republic's Russian speakers and led the Turkish-speaking Gagauz minority, concentrated in the southwest, to campaign for autonomy. In November 1989, after MPF radicals had staged a petrol bomb assault on the Interior Ministry headquarters in Chişinǎu, the Moldavian Communist Party's (MCP) conservative leader, Semyon Grossu, was dismissed and replaced by the more conciliatory Pyotr Luchinsky.

Towards independence

In the wake of the Chişinǎu riots, a temporary state of emergency was imposed and a ban placed on public meetings. This restricted campaigning for the February 1990 supreme soviet elections, in which, nevertheless, the MPF polled strongly. The movement towards independence gathered momentum, and a ‘sovereignty’ declaration was made in June 1990. In October 1990, both the Trans-Dniester region (centred around Tiraspol) and the Gagauz-inhabited region in southwest Moldova formed unofficial breakaway republics. Soon afterwards states of emergency were imposed in both areas.

A new state

In March 1991 the republic boycotted the USSR referendum on preservation of the Union. During the August 1991 attempted anti-Gorbachev coup in Moscow, which was denounced by President Snegur but supported by the Trans-Dniester and Gagauz-inhabited regions, there were large pro-democracy demonstrations in Chişinǎu. After the coup attempt failed, MCP activity was banned in workplaces and in August 1991 the republic formally declared its independence. Immediate recognition was accorded by Romania. In December 1991 the republic joined the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Snegur was directly elected president, unopposed. In March 1992 Moldova was admitted into the United Nations and US diplomatic recognition was granted.

Trans-Dniester and Gagauz conflict

Following pro-unification border rallies, the Moldavian and Romanian presidents met early in 1992 to discuss the possibility of union.

President Snegur, who had been directly elected president in an unopposed contest in December 1991, favoured a gradual approach towards unification. In March 1992 a state of emergency was re-imposed in Trans-Dniester region following an upsurge of fighting between Moldavian security forces and ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, fearful of the proposed merger. Between May and July hundreds died in the fighting, with Russian troops present in the republic accused of assisting the Slav separatists. A Russian peacekeeping force was later deployed in the troubled region, and ceasefires agreed there and in Gagauz.

Reunification rejected

Lack of popular support for reunification and a weak economy led to the fall of the MFP-led government in July 1992. Andrei Sangheli took over as prime minister, heading a ‘government of national accord’ that drew much of its support from the Agrarian Democratic Party (ADP). The new administration launched a privatization programme in October 1993 and the following month introduced a new currency, the leu, to replace the Russian rouble. Meanwhile, President Snegur, having abandoned his earlier policy of seeking closer ties with Romania, attempted to improve relations with Russia and strengthen Moldovan statehood. This change of policy proved popular and in parliamentary elections in February 1994 the ADP won the largest number of seats. In a March referendum, voters rejected demands for a merger with Romania and prospects of reunification receded, with Moldova dependent on Russia for its fuel supplies and fearful that such a move might provoke a full-scale civil war. Ceasefires remained effective in both Trans-Dniester and Gagauz regions and relations with Moscow had improved by mid-1994. A new constitution, adopted in July 1994, sought to guarantee political pluralism and free ethnic and linguistic expression. It also barred the stationing of foreign troops on Moldovan soil, establishing the republic's ‘permanent neutrality’, and granted special autonomous status to the Gagauz and Dnestr regions. Russia subsequently agreed to withdraw its troops from the Dnestr region by 1997.

In December 1996, in the second round of the presidential election, Petru Lucinschi, formerly the highest ranking Moldovan in the now defunct Communist Party of the Soviet Union and now the chair of the Parlamentul (Moldovan legislature), defeated Snegur, capturing 54% of the vote. The pro-Russian Lucinschi, advocating closer ties with Russia and the CIS, was supported by leftist parties, including the ruling Agrarian Democratic Party. In the breakaway Dnestr region, elections in December 1996 resulted in the re-election of President Igor Smirnov.

Lucinschi formally became president in January 1997 and appointed Ion Cebuc, chairman of the State Accounting Chamber, as prime minister and announced that he planned to grant special status to the Dnestr region. In February 1997 a new centrist political party, the Movement for a Democratic and Prosperous Moldova, was formed in support of President Lucinschi.

In November 1997 Prime Minister Cebuc signed an agreement with Igor Smirnov, president of the breakaway Dnestr region, which provided for improved economic and social cooperation. Also in November, a new election law was passed, providing for the election of the 104-member legislature, the Parlamentul, by the same system of proportional representation as used in 1994.

The Moldovan Communist Party (PCM) won the biggest share (30%) of the vote in March 1998 elections to the Parlamentul, but fell short of a majority of seats, since proportional representation is used. It won 40 seats, followed by the Democratic Convention of Moldova (CDM), which won 26 seats and 19% of the vote, and Prosperous Moldova (PMPD), which won 24 seats and 18% of the vote.

In March 1999, a new coalition government was formed, headed by Prime Minister Ion Sturza. The government fell in November after losing a parliamentary vote of no confidence. After an effort by Vladimir Voronin, an old-style communist, to form a government, Dumitru Barghis became prime minister at the end of December.

Russia agreed in November 1999 that it would withdraw its contingent of 2,600 troops in Moldova by 2002.

Constitutional change

In July 2000, constitutional changes increased the powers of the Parlamentul, including the power to elect the president, who had previously been elected by the people. These changes were made despite a referendum in May that had approved the idea of a directly-elected president. However, the incumbent President Lucinschi criticized the change in October and refused to stand in such an election. A further setback followed in December when neither of the two presidential candidates were able to secure the required 61 out of 101 parliamentary votes. As parliament seemed unable to elect his successor, President Lucinschi called general elections, which were won by the Communist Party in February 2001.

Communist president

The Communist leader, Vladimir Voronin, was elected president in April 2001. Voronin pledged to seek closer relations with Russia, strengthen the role of the state while maintaining a multi-party democracy, and seek early resolution of the conflict with Trans-Dniester, which seceded in 1992. He also announced that Moldova would not seek to join NATO. Vasile Tarlev, an independent industrialist, became prime minister, heading a government that included finance minister Mihai Manoli and foreign minister Nicolae Cernomaz from the preceding government. President Voronin dismissed his education minister, Ilie Vancea, in February 2002 after Vancea's plan to force schoolchildren to learn Russian as a second language brought up to 80,000 young people on to the streets in protest.

Moldova (redirected from Republica Moldova)