Monitoring→Politics→Transnistrian Conflict

On 27 March 2005 in the Transnistrian region were organised elections to the position of deputy in the town, district and village soviets and to the position of head of local administrations. According to the data of the department of statistics of the region, about 40% of the 410,000 voters registered in the region took part in the elections, which as a result were declared by the Transnistrian authorities valid. Most candidates — about 1,700 for the position of deputy, and 225 for that of head of local administrations — were representatives of business circles from the region, and only an insignificant part of them were candidates on behalf of the communist party from the region and of the Transnistrian branch of the Democratic Liberal Party of the Russian Federation. According to observers, the large number of candidates was due to the introduction last year of the status of immunity for the deputies in local soviets.

The Moldovan Foreign Ministry appealed to the international community on 26 March to condemn the organisation by the breakaway Transnistrian authorities of the so-called local elections. In a statement issued on 28 March, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs labelled the elections “a farce” and declared the poll unconstitutional, just like the breakaway regime itself. The communique stated that all attempt “from outside” to observe the so-called elections will be interpreted as an act of solidarity with the destabilising actions of the secessionist regime and interference in the internal affairs of Moldova.

Despite Tirapol’s invitations, no international organisation has delegated observers to their elections. The attempt of the Moldova Helsinki Committee to send three teams of observers into the region failed because the Transnistrian authorities refused to issue the necessary accreditations. Helsinki Committee told the press it nonetheless managed to “observe certain things”, which demonstrated that “the elections were organised with the violation of all national and international norms.”

In the meantime, after the end of the electoral campaign in Moldova discussions on the prospects of the Transnistrian settlement were resumed. There is a general consensus among the political forces represented in the new Moldovan Parliament on the need to change the existing negotiations format by inviting other players, such as the EU, to join it. The recent finalisation of the Moldova-EU Action Plan, whose priority has been declared the EU contribution to conflict resolution, and the appointment of the Special EU Representative to Moldova, have been interpreted in Chisinau as two encouraging signs on behalf of the European Community. In parallel, the Presidents of Ukraine and Georgia announced they would present on 22 April a settlement plan during their attendance of the GUUAM Summit of Heads of State. According to the authors, the plan will seek to materialise the regional cooperation initiative which is GUUAM, for which the administration in Kiev has engaged to provide all support to make it efficient.

The great absentee from all these regional and international developments on the Transnistrian issue seems to be the Russian Federation, whom the Moldovan authorities have been accusing systematically of interference in the internal affairs of Moldova, political and economic support to the Transnistrian regime and illegal military presence on Moldovan soil. The unprecedented crisis in the Moldovan-Russian relations risks to materialise in the imposition by the latter of a number of severe economic sanctions on the former, such as oil transactions at world prices. At the same time, Russia remains an important actor in the conflict resolution process and a functional agreement on the issue may be reached only with Russian participation in one from or another. Thus it seems that the fist step in resolving the Transnistrian problem that the new government in Moldova needs to take is to repair relations with the Russian Federation.

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