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Activity of the President on July 21 – August 3, 2003

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Political wrap-up

On 30 July 2003, the President Voronin held a press conference to wrap up the political developments of the first quarter of 2003. According to the President, the Transnistrian issue is still the major political and economic challenge facing Moldova, and the deadlock that the relations between Chisinau and Tiraspol are in at present is due to the policy of self isolation promoted by the Transnistrians and their desire to preserve the current status quo. Under these circumstances any discussion on the future mechanism of military guarantees is premature now; this will be possible only following the conclusion of a political document regulating the conflict, i.e. the new federal Constitution now in drafting. European integration is the priority of Moldova’s domestic and foreign policies of the current government, and it requires concrete actions, such as the recent foundation of a Department for European Integration under the Moldovan Foreign Ministry.

Another occasion for conclusions has been the speech of the Moldovan President to the closing meeting of the 2003 parliamentary spring-summer session. The speech was presented in the governmental media as a political programme of the current government in which Voronin has put forward a number of clear objectives and benchmarks for achieving them. The President reiterated most of the points made earlier stating that “the objective of European integration and that of reintegrating the country are two sides of the same task” and that by 2007 Moldova is to become an associate member of the European Union. Achieving this objective will be the main task that the legislative body, and in particular the majority faction, will pursue in its future activity. In the view of the President, European integration may not be a “mechanical” process, reduced to the “deployment of some troops in Transnistria”; it is to involve a clear, well co-ordinated and detailed programme of actions that the President requested the Government and Parliament to develop.

Transnistria — the initiative of the OSCE Netherlands Chairman-in Office

The repercussions of the initiative launched in early July by the OSCE Netherlands CiO to send EU peacemaking troops to Transnistria were still felt in the activity of the Moldovan Presidency over the past two weeks. It is worth noting that the President refrained from publicly speaking on the subject up to the press conference on 30 July (in the meantime he only warned the meeting of Moldovan ambassadors in Chisinau not to let themselves influenced by certain foreign and local politicians who “intentionally overestimate” the military aspect of the Transnistrian conflict). The rhetoric about Moldova’s European integration has nonetheless abounded during this time. As noteworthy are the signals that various parties interested in the resolution of the Transnistrian conflict have been sending to the Moldovan leaders.

Thus, at the beginning of the two weeks covered here, President Voronin received a telephone call from the Russian President Vladimir Putin. One’s attention is drawn by the difference of points that the official press communiques of the two presidencies have made with regard to the contents of the call. While the Moldova press release refers to Moldova’s successes in stabilising the economic and political situation and mentions only briefly the Transnistrian issue, the Russian press release, issued one day later, refers to the “primary attention that the Two Presidents have given to the situations created around the process of Transnistrian conflict resolution at the beginning of the activity of the Joint Constitutional Commission (JCC)”, whose activity the Russian side will fully support. Notably, this telephone talk took place following a number of statements by Russian officials who disapproved of the Dutch initiative to pass the peacekeeping operations in Transnistria under EU aegis.

It appears that the USA are also ready to support the JCC and its efforts at drafting a formula of “asymmetrical federation” Of this the President Voronin was assured by the Ambassador Rudolf V. Perina, US Special Negotiator for Conflicts in Eurasia, during a meeting last week. The American emissary stated that both the EU and the OSCE want the Transnistrian conundrum be resolved by the end of 2003. Perina made these statements following a number of meetings he had had in Brussels and Vienna at which many European officials showed concern with the protraction of the Russian troops withdrawal from the region and of the conflict resolution process itself. Although Perina found premature the talks on sending EU troops to the region due to the yet informal character of this proposal, he said that any future peacekeeping mission should hold an international mandate and include several nations.

In an address to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, another US High Official, US Ambassador to the OSCE Stephan M. Minikes, reaffirmed US support for current Moldovan Government efforts at solving the conflict and drafting a new, federal constitution and restated US hopes that Russia will retreat its troops and weapons from Transnistria by the end of 2003.

The Civic Forum and the Conception of State National Policy of Moldova

On 25 July 2003, in Chisinau a number of non-governmental organisations gathered a National Forum intended to set up a model of civic co-operation between the two banks of Nistru River as a new way towards resolving the Transnistrian problem. In his address to the Forum, President Voronin stated that the Forum is a follow up of the dialogue between the government and the civil society initiated by the President a year ago through the Social Pact, and aims at the co-operation between the government and the civil society in achieving Moldova’s major strategic goal — the reintegration of the country.

The key point in President’s address, though, has been the presentation of the draft Conception of State National Policy of Moldova, which has been submitted to Parliament and published for public debates. The essence of the Conception is about “identifying the mechanisms for building a harmonious multiethnic society in Moldova” and its major objective is “to integrate and consolidate the single multicultural and multilingual people of the Republic of Moldova”, which is the “political and juridical continuation of the multisecular process of continuous statehood of the Moldovan people”.

Although the draft law is a juridical document, one that is to be adopted as organic law, its nature is undeniably political, and it abounds in such politically controversial notions and ideas such as the description of the majority people living in Moldova and of the language it speaks as “Moldovan”. The document is also heavily flawed in juridical terms either, as has been found by the Venice Commission, which has subjected it to juridical review at the request of the Moldovan authorities. Among other things, the Commission has pointed to the confusion that arises between the status of official language (Moldovan) and the one of the language of inter-ethnical communication (Russian), the exaggerated emphasis put on the “interests and values of the state” which do not always coincide with the ones of the individual, the misrepresentation of the concept of “civic conciliation” which conflicts with the principle of pluralism in a democratic society.

As expected, the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition parties have repeatedly criticised the President’s initiative, which they regard as one likely to revive interethnic tensions and polarise the Moldovan society along ethnic lines. Likewise, the Conception is evidence to the unjustified tendency of the Moldovan government to artificially bring the issue of interethnic relations back into the public eye. In other analyses, both the Civic Forum and the draft of the Conception have been regarded as yet two other megainitiatives of the current government meant to distract the attention of the public opinion from the real problems of the society to which the former appears to have no clues. The president assessed some of these criticisms as produce of co-operation between the Moldovan opposition and the Transnistrians and a serious obstacle in the way of crafting a multinational state in Moldova to match its European aspirations.

June 30 – July 20, 2003 August 4–17, 2003