Moldovan opposition plans to surround parliament building demanding government resignation

Activists from the opposition Socialist Party and Our Party plan to surround the building of the Moldovan parliament on Thursday and demand resignation of the government they blame for the crisis in the country. Socialist Party leader Igor Dodon said tens of thousands of people will take part in the demonstration.

“The parliament will be surrounded from all sides but demonstrators will not enter the building. Our deputies will pass the demands,” Dodon, who controls the largest faction in the parliament, said. “The demonstration will be peaceful. We will exert pressure on the authorities, but in the framework of law,” he noted. “During the session, we will make the authorities launch the procedure of resignations and expose those guilty in stealing a billion [US dollars] from the banking system.”

On Wednesday, protest organizers met with law enforcers and coordinated their plans with them. Interior Minister Oleg Balan, chief police officer, representatives of the prosecutor’s office and the Service of Information Security were also present at the meeting. The interior minister called on the organizers to report all suspicious objects or provocateurs.

Socialists and Communists earlier voted in parliamentary commissions for including in the agenda the issues of dismissing the heads of the General Prosecutor’s Office, Service of Information Security, National Center on Fighting Corruption, Central Election Commission, and National Bank. However, Parliament Speaker Andrian Canda refuted the proposals at the government session. The opposition also insists on the resignation of President Nicolae Timofti and Prime Minister Valriu Strelet and on dismissing the parliament. Oppositionists say Moldova is “a country seized by oligarchs.”

On Wednesday, the authorities proposed to the opposition to start direct dialogue but their offers were refuted. “We will not negotiation with criminals or sign any agreements with them. They want to make us sit at the negotiations table just to ‘blow off steam’. We know these tricks,” Dodon said.

Among those who attended the meeting were leaders of the Civic Platform DA. They also refused to start a dialogue. They only conveyed their demands to the authorities. Their demands are very similar to those of the left parties but DA supports European integration and accused the authorities of “compromising the slogan by stealing.” “We give the authorities two days to start fulfilling our demands. In another case, we will continue protesting,” DA’s leader Andrei Nestase said.

This autumn, the Moldovan capital is shaken by mass protests in which tens of thousands of people take part. The center of Chisinau now looks like a camp site separated into two groups – DA Civic Platform on one side and Socialist Party on the other.