CHISINAU, September 8. /TASS/. Activists protest for a third day in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on Tuesday, demanding the president's resignation and early elections after a $1 bln bank fraud.
About three thousand people took part in a rally on Monday night in Chisinau's national square. Most protesters went back home towards morning, the others stayed camped out near the government building in the city's main square. Chisinau residents continue bringing food, water and personal care products to the tent city. The number of tents erected by demonstrators has significantly increased from about 50 on Monday to more than 150 on Tuesday.
"There are even more tents now, and people’s willingness to stand to the end has only grown. They come over here even from regions," Kirill Motspan, a leader of the civic platform Dignity and Justice (DA) which organized the protest and member of the contact group for talks with the government, told TASS.
Motspan, a former spokesman for Moldova's Interior Ministry, came to the square wearing a colonel's uniform with insignia and medals.
"We have forwarded through Prime Minister Valery Strelets our demands and proposals to discuss them to President Nicolae Timofti and Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu. But we have not yet received any response from them," Motspan said.
Another leader of the platform, Andrei Nastase, said that the action in central Chisinau would continue until protesters’ demands were met. "If the authorities fail to satisfy our demands, protesters will start besieging government buildings," he said.
The actions of protest over a banking fraud in the amount of $1 billion broke out in the heart of the capital Chisinau on Sunday. Organisers from the Dignity and Justice movement speak in favour of the country's European integration.
Although the incumbent Moldovan government espouses the same objective, the two political forces have largely different views on the process of integration in the EU.
The protesters' demands, which include the resignation of President Nicolae Timofti and other officials including the governor of the national bank and early parliamentary elections, spin around the disappearance of $1 billion from the national banking system.
The latter brought about a sharp depreciation of the national monetary unit, the leu, pushed the inflation rate up and depressed the already constrained living standards.