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Activity of the President on August 18 – September 7, 2003
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e-journal #14 |
Independence Day
On 27 August 2003, Moldova celebrated the 12th anniversary of its independence. The celebrations included mass entertainment programmes, exhibitions, concerts of popular and pop music and a beer festival. The official part of celebrations saw depositions of flowers to the monuments to Stephen the Great and to the one to the soldiers who fought in the 1992 war in Transnistria, as well as an official reception given by President Voronin. During the reception, the President held the speech “We Want in Europe”, in which he said that the European integration of Moldova is our best option for edifying a viable and prosperous state. At the same time, President Voronin stated that “European integration is in no way a geopolitical option, and it does not constitute a change of priorities in our foreign policy”; it is rather the shortest way towards transforming the country and connecting it to the global processes, as well as “the most reliable mechanism of recovering our territorial integrity”.
There was no news in Voronin’s speech: the theme of European integration as a method of attaining territorial integrity and prosperity has been a leitmotif of all of his speeches lately. The importance of the speech, however, may not be underestimated, at least when one compares it with the speeches held by Voronin on the same occasion in 2001 and 2002: the comparison reveals the remarkable ideological evolution that the President has seen during his two years in office (see ADEPT Comment “Republic of Moldova — the country of projects, concepts, strategies…”).
The holiday “Our Language”, which marks the consecration of the Romanian language as the state language and its reversal to the Latin script on 31 August 1989, was also celebrated through a series of cultural and artistic events throughout the country. Still, unlike the Independence Day, the official part of the celebrations this time was quite bleak, being almost ignored by the top Moldovan officials.
In the meantime, President Voronin received messages of congratulation on the occasion of Moldova’s Independence Day from a number of heads of state and officials, including the UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, the US President George Bush, who mentioned in his message the considerable progress that Moldova has made in advancing democracy and in searching for a political resolution to the Transnistrian conflict, the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who referred to the “strategic partnership” that has been established between Russia and Moldova throughout years, etc. On the same day, President Voronin had a telephone conversation with the latter, reportedly on the Transnistrian topic. However, neither the Moldovan nor the Russian side published any more details about the conversation, and analysts have linked it to the visit of President Putin to Moldova planned for this November.
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