MOLDOVANS LIVING in Ireland staged a second demonstration in Dublin last night over disputed election results in the impoverished former Soviet state.
Several hundred people attended a protest organised by the Moldovan Association of Ireland on O’Connell Street, calling for a rerun of last weekend’s poll that saw the communist party returned to power. A similar protest was held on Tuesday.
“We are protesting because we do not agree with the results of the elections in Moldova, because they were a fraud and the opposition has evidence of that,” association treasurer Angela Katana told The Irish Times.
“The communist regime is trying to blame everything that is going on in Moldova on the opposition. Basically, there is civil war going on in the country and we want to tell people the truth.”
An estimated 6,000 Moldovans live in Ireland.
The election result, disputed by opposition parties, sparked riots in the capital Chisinau on Tuesday during which protesters set fire to the parliament building and ransacked president Vladimir Voronin’s offices.
The violence left at least one person dead and 270 injured. Almost 200 people were arrested.
Official results have put the communists ahead with close to 50 per cent. A party needs 61 seats out of 101 in the assembly to choose its own candidate for president. The three main opposition parties have said they would not enter a coalition with the communists.
The protests were led by anti-communist youth groups who favour closer ties with the EU and Romania, of which Moldova was part until the second World War and with which it has strong cultural ties. It was subsumed by the Soviet Union in 1944 and declared independence in 1991.
Moldova is Europe’s poorest country, with an average monthly wage of about €200.
