CHISINAU, September 25. /TASS/. Representatives of the Socialist Party, the largest faction in the Moldovan parliament spent last night in tents near the parliament building, demanding early elections, the party leader Igor Dodon said on Friday. He told TASS that thus they have launched a non-stop protest jointly with the Moldova Noastra (Our Party) alliance.
"We’ll free Moldova from oligarchs together," Dodon said. "Everything is absolutely legal - we obtained permission for setting up the tent camp, we have all the documents. Deputies from the Socialist Party will be staying here all the time. About 10 deputies, me included, spent the night near the parliament building," Dodon said. According to him, there are about 100 tents in the camp.
The two parties plan to gather tens of thousands of people in Chisinau’s main square on Sunday. In this connection, Dodon asked not to interfere with the demonstration of the leaders of the Civic Platform DA (Dignity and Truth) who organised there a tent camp under the flags of Moldova and the European Union. The demands of these parties are not different from those made by the Civic Platform DA: the resignation of the first persons of the state and the heads of supervisory agencies; government resignation and the appointment of a technical cabinet of ministers to hold snap parliamentary elections and transition to direct election of the country’s president by Moldovan citizens. However, they have refused to stage joint protests.
The Socialist Party supports the Eurasian vector of integration and rapprochement with Russia, and it holds the largest faction in the Moldovan parliament, controlling around a quarter of all mandates. The party demands resignation of the current authorities and return to direct presidential election, as well as cancellation of parliamentary immunity.
"Mass support of anti-government protests by the population means that the policy of European integration carried out by the current authorities has failed. Those who were brought to power by the West during riots of 7 April 2009, when the parliament building and presidential residence were burned down in Chisinau, now risk to be overthrown themselves in the protests. People are outraged by growing prices, impoverishment, unemployment, corruption in the government," Dodon told TASS previously. According to him, Socialists have their own vision of the country’s future. "We are against joining NATO, uniting with Romania and entering EU - which are advocated by protesters’ leaders," he said.
On September 6, Civic Platform DA gathered in Chisinau tens of thousands of people in a most massive protest rally over recent years. The demonstrators pitched a few hundred tents in the city’s central square and began to picket government offices. According to observers, these protests have been gathering less and less people every day. According to Moldovan experts, this has happened because the Civic Platform has failed to nominate respected leaders who could lead the protests and launch the fight against corruption in state institutions.