Transnistrian Conflict on September 13–26, 2005

On 22 September the electoral campaign for the elections to the Supreme Soviet (the de facto local legislative body) determined for 11 December 2005 started in the break away region of Transnistria. The 43 deputies will be elected for five years according to the principles of a majoritarian electoral system within single mandate electoral constituencies, half of which will be organised in Tiraspol and Tighina (Bender) towns. 418,468 voters are expected to participate in the poll; the number of voters has been calculated according to the results of the population census conducted by the Transnistrian authorities in October 2004, and which have showed that at present the region is populated by approximately 555,000 inhabitants. For the holding of elections, 1.2 million Transnistrian rubles or around 150,000 USD have been allocated from the local budget.

The elections will take place on the basis of the Transnistrian “constitution” and electoral laws — the latter have been recently reviewed by a panel of the Russian State Duma, which found them in full compliance with existing international standards in the field. In the near future, the Central Electoral Commission of Transnistria will send letters of invitation to several states and international organisations to observe the elections, including to the central electoral bodies of the CIS states and the states of the so-called “CIS-2”, the organisation of non-recognised states from the CIS.

Both the Moldovan authorities and the OSCE said they will not recognise the results of the 11 December elections.

The organisation of free and fair elections in Transnistria was one of the key subjects discussed by President Vladimir Voronin during his meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Victor Yushcenko on 21 September in Kiev. As a result of the meeting, the two Presidents signed a joint letter to the OSCE in which they have called upon the OSCE to take the necessary steps to set up an International Electoral Commission to organise the elections to the Transnistrian legislative in compliance with the OSCE standards. During a press conference organised on 22 September in Chisinau, the Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, William Hill, said that a first step towards meeting the two presidents’ request would be to conduct an objective assessment of the situation in the region, and that the OSCE is already looking into this. According to a technical document drafted at the Mission, the OSCE would need around eight months to organise democratic elections in Transnistria. The OSCE however will start dealing with this only after a political decision on the matter is reached.

During the same press conference, Hill outlined the key points on the agenda of the meeting of the participants in the Transnistrian negotiations process that is to take place on 26–27 September in Odessa. Thus, in Odessa, representatives of the Republic of Moldova, Transnistria and the mediators on behalf of the OSCE, the Russian Federation and Ukraine will discuss about the resumption of the negotiations process, the holding of democratic elections in Transnistria, problems related to the democratisation of the region, the monitoring of enterprises from the Transnistrian industrial-military complex and of the Moldovan-Ukrainian border. Also, the meeting will examine the proposal to extend the negotiations format by inviting the EU and US to join it as observers. According to Hill, the agenda of the meeting was accepted both by Chisinau and Tiraspol, but “judging from consultations, the parties view each of these problems in their own way”.

We would like to remind our readers that the negotiations process has been stopped since Moldova suspended its participation in it in August 2004 in sigh of protest against the policy of the Transnistrian authorities on the Moldovan Latin script schools from the region. The Moldovan side has also stopped for several months now its participation in the work of the Joint Control Commission, the body created through the 1992 ceasefire agreement to monitor the situation in the security zone, in response to the illegal instalment of Transnistrian customs and check points in the security zone.

In a different development, the EU decided to deploy by 1 December at the latest a border mission on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, which will consist of 50 representatives of border and customs services. The mission will be led by the EU Special Representative for Moldova, Adriaan Jacobovits de Szeged, and will last for two years. At the beginning of October, Moldova and Ukraine will sign a Memorandum on the Activity of the European Commission Facilitation Mission at the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, following which the EU Council will adopt the plan of activity of the mission and its funding arrangements, the cost of the mission being evaluated at 3 million US USD.

e-democracy.md

Transnistrian Conflict on September 13–26, 2005

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