Russians accused of “manipulating” Moldovan election assessment

In the wake of massive protests against Moldova’s communist government and the crackdown that followed, new analysis is emerging. Paul Bisca wrote an interesting column for Post Global in which he cites claims that Russian members of the Moldovan election monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) manipulated the organization’s final assessment of the Moldovan elections so that the government of Moldvoan president, Vladimir Voronin, would have a legitimized victory.

Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca, a member of the Liberal Party, said: “The elections were fraudulent, there was multiple voting.”

The opposition have called for ballots to be recounted or the vote to be reheld – a request rejected so far by the government.

A report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe on Sunday’s vote gave a mostly positive assessment of the poll.

But a British member of the OSCE’s observation team questioned that conclusion.

Baroness Emma Nicholson said she found it “difficult to endorse the very warm press statement” from the head of the OSCE.

“The problem was that it was an OSCE report, and in the OSCE are, of course, the Russians, and their view was quite different, quite substantially different, for example from my own,” she told BBC News.

She said she and other observers had a “very, very strong feeling” that there had been some manipulation, “but we couldn’t find any proof”.

The European Union said little about the popular protests that engulfed the Moldovan capital earlier this month largely because of assessments that showed a more-or-less free and fair election process giving the Communists a larger mandate in the parliament.

Moldova is Europe’s poorest country with a per capita GDP of about $250.