Moldavia and the burning of the parliament

The news reaches us that the Parliament in Chisinau, capital of Moldavia, has been set on fire by the opposition to the former communist party. It makes me recollect the experiences I have from post-communist countries and their elections in Eastern Europe and Eastern and Central Asia. During my visits in the Mongolian Republic I found documents that showed a pattern of travels by Mongolian politicians to the other new democracies in the post-Soviet area. The travels were undertaken to learn the newest tricks in the book on how to win an election. The visits were made and observations were carefully noted and brought back home and put to good use.

In the special case of Mongolia different politicians visited for example Ukraine during the Orange Revolution and took their experiences back home for usage. We have also noticed how the CIA has supported the different revolutions and subversive actions that has taken place in these regions and how they have given dissidents and oppositions tactical and strategical advice, on how to act.

This forms a pattern. When the US spreads its ideas of democracy around the globe it is a rather limited idea of democracy. The cooperation that newly formed democracies are forced to adopt are formed mostly by the World Bank, The IMF and the WTO, and limits democracy to a national level, ignoring the regional and local governance. It results in that citizens are not allowed to vote for issues concerning money. Instead the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO decides how the newly independent state are to use its economic funds and how aid and loans are to be used. Of course, this makes the citizens of these countries disappointed and they perceive their democracy as something quite useless.

This was the case of Mongolia. The Democrats and the Liberals gained power between 1996 and 2000. The experiences of the rural people, the herdsmen, during this period were impaired education for their children, that the health care system broke down and that they got less pay for their goods and raw material. The latter was due to the marketisation that made herdsmen totally dependent on foreign buyers. Before, the state had a system for bulk purchase, salary paid by the state, education and health care for the benefit of the rural citizens. The Democrats and the markets liberals ruined this system.

In the parliament elections of 2008 the Mongols voted for a government formed by the Communist party. The opposition accused the Socialists of ballot rigging and attacked and burned the Socialist Party (MPRP) head quarters in central Ulaanbaatar. I was there as an elections observer. I did not see any cheating and I did not meet anyone who had seen anything suffiently organized to be manifested in the election results. The results were due to, as I see it, two things. First, there was a change of election system from majority elections in single candidate constituencies to majority elections in multi candidate constituencies. This made it more difficult for the voters to realize the consequences of their choice. It meant that each voter had between two and four votes. Research from other countries show that when a voter has the possibility to make this kind of multiple decisions, they tend to act as they were participating in a survey and lay their vote in the middle. In elections this means that the voter is balancing candidates against each other, which makes it risky to trust opinion polls. Secondly, the opposition seemed to deduce their assessment of the mood of the voters from the three biggest cities. As I see it the rural people would be suicidal to vote for a government who doesn’t give a damned about their living conditions. Hence, I don’t believe in the talk about ballot rigging. I do believe that electoral rigging can have occurred, but not in such extent that it could affect the outcome of the parliament elections.

What I DO believe is that there is an organized smearing campaign, aimed at undermining the trust of parties that are reformed former communist parties in these countries.

I believe that a similar scenario is now taking place in Moldavia. Politicians of the opposition in Mongolia have time after time shown themselves useless in governing the country. They simply don’t seem to understand the concept. They don’t understand the simple motto “United we stand, divided we fall”. From this perspective the former Communist Party of Mongolia is far better organized on every level, and people of course recognize this. To, as a democratic and liberal opposition, burn down their opponents head quarters or to burn down the parliament building, seem to contradict everything they say they represent.

It makes me think of a sketch with Johan Ulvesson and Claes Månsson in the comedy Lorry many years ago. Ulvesson is acting as the maladjusted yob, being interviewed by Månsson. All the time Ulvesson is repeating the phrase “But we don’t have any place to hang around.” Finally Månsson asks: “But you did get a place to hang around! Why did you burn it down then?” Ulvesson looks at Månsson with utter surprise and says: “But we didn’t have a place to hang around!”

Is that how it is? Is there no sensible answer? Or is there a giant conspiracy engineered by the CIA to encircle the Russian Federation with US friendly regimes?

First photo: Parliament in Chisinau

Second photo: MPRP Head Quarters, Ulaanbaatar. Photo Mongolia: Anna-Karin Johansson Brikell