Alina Inayeh’s prescription is wise indeed. Moldova is on the edge of a cliff and listing. Only civil society can serve as ballast keeping the nation afloat. Old Line Leninist like Voronin don’t know how to negotiate from a position of strength, only from a position of weakness to avoid extermination. The Government won the election but lost the post-election when it hamstrung its police in the face of demonstrators. Peaceful students were used as cover by well payed professional arsonists from next door. The buildings went alight very fast, very professionally and it cost the lives of a few demonstrators. The police failed to secure the center and the public now fears that the government is weak. It wasn’t Ceausescu 1989 rage but NYC 9/11/2001 fear. Prime Minister Greceanii’s appeal is spot on, for mass arrests is all that the blind government knows how to do. It is incumbent on it to avoid torture and abuse of Chisinau’s elite children in jail. They know nothing…they were dupes just as were the officials. The foreign operatives must be carefully teased out– BUT GENTLY, this is micro-surgery. The less kids are beaten and bruised, the more stand out the agents of Kiev. In the end, the names of these operatives cannot be made public and they must be negotiated back to their masters in exchange for expense of rebuilding. Moldavians must unite because the US/EU can’t afford to pay their plight any attention. Only by showing emergency national unity and flexibility in the name of public safety can Moldova acquire further consideration from the current liberal Russian president. This is not an enviable position but that’s how it is. Moldavians have a severe political crisis on hand,coming on top of an economic crisis far more dangerous. What’s needed is a woman’s touch rather than the fist of a marlan (thug). Now, any acts of violence that injure life or limb by either pro-gov or anti-gov forces hurt the whole country. THIS IS A CRITICAL TIME FOR DISCIPLINED NATIONAL DAMAGE CONTROL!

Voronin is a sort of vanilla-gorrilla that does not hide his security forces’ lower primate violent characteristics. But the fact is that Moldova has been dragged by Sakshvilli and Yushenko into their attempt to cause a Russian/US-NATO war. When Voronin saw that EU was punishing Bulgaria for a level of corruption that is seen only on religious holidays of restraint in Moldova– so crooked is the regime– he realized that his government’s future as attached to the EU is a pipe dream. In the meantime, the shock of gas cut off by Russia has made Chisinau realize that most of the remitances it gets are from its citizens working in Russia and little from those Moldovian illegals in the West. AS such, pretending to be a “Western Democracy” (sic) it is really an Eastern economic appendage dependent on the rubble, not the euro. What is inescapable is that most Moldovan voters realized that Voronin is both loyal to Moldovan independence while also very able at bowing to Ruiisa just enough to keep the fires going in the cold winter. Over time, Bassarabia, what’s left of Moldova now that Russia swalled up Transnistra, may deside to graft back on to Romania– something Russia has signalled it would not oppose. For that to hapen Romania has to prove that it is more than a crooked whirlpool that tears appart whatever falls into it. Romania-Moldova unity will require that a lot smarter and more able people take power than now exist in both governments. A lot of crooks on both sides must be made one handed in punishment as sign of law-and-order before the public on both sides sees any value to reunion. Until them, it is important not to allow Ukraine to drag Moldova into the chloracne psychosis of Yushenko, the testosterone surge of Tymoshenko nor the “eat me” desire of those wishing to be swallowed back into the Russia of the past. Moscow and Bruxelles as well as Wash DC should keep in mind that ethnic unity between the peoples of two nations might bear little relevance to the global economics of recovery in that region. Moldova is Europe’s poorest country and must think Moldova first, making only deals that assue a future for its youth. Voronin’s only claim to fame is that he has kept the nation stable and the pension checks to the old people and babies coming whlle the youth went to work as illigal labor in the West and Russia. Now that they all have to come back because there are no more jobs abroad, the situation in Moldovan electoral allignment may have radically changed. Yet the votes went overwhelmingly pro-Communist. It remains for us to elucidate the complex “by-the-skin-of-our-teeth” economics that motivated the political voting of Moldovians rather than trotting out worn out old ethnic models on which are based a lot of worthless polisci PhDs theses.