CHISINAU, October 4. /TASS/. Moldova’s Dignity and Truth (DA) Civil Platform ended its protest rally in downtown Chisinau on Sunday by a march to the office of the Global Business Center Co owned by Vlad Plakhontyuk, a key politician and businessman.
Protesters were met by the police who let only the protest leaders inside the building. Plakhotnyuk however was not in. Demonstrators, who were carrying the flags of Moldova and the European Union, chanted "We are the People," "Down with the Junta," "Power - To the People," "Let Us Return the Country Stolen by Oligarchs," "Thieves - To Prison."
"We did not find Plakhotnyuk inside the building but there were a lot of young men in sports suits," Nicolae Rotary, a protest activist, told journalists, adding that security officers had not let the protesters to hoist the Moldovan flag over the building.
Earlier on Sunday, riot police pushed a group of protesters off the parliament building. The protesters wanted to hand over to lawmakers a petition demanding resignation of the government. Several demonstrators were detained in a subsequent clash with the police.
The DA rally on Sunday drew about 3,000 people, or much less than a rally in Chisinau’s central square on September 6. The leaders of the Civil Platform represent several public organizations of different political views. Some are in favour of Moldova’s unification with Romania. After today’s rally, DA activists said they would use a tactic of acts of defiance and announced a signature raising campaign in favour of a referendum on general election of the president.
Mass protests have been held in Chisinau for a month. The opposition, which calls Moldova "a country seized by oligarchs," demands resignation of the country’s top officials and insists on early parliamentary elections and direct elections of the president. Central Chisinau is literally turning into a tent camp divided between two opposition parties. Both demand resignation of the country’s leaders and early elections. The DA Platform however stands for European integration and accuses the current authorities of discrediting this slogan by large-scale embezzlement. The Party of Socialists and Our Party stand for Eurasian geopolitical vector and closer relations with Russia. They organized a mass rally on September 25. This Sunday, they refrained from protest actions not to hamper DA activists.
Large-scale protests erupted in Moldova in the spring 2015 after the media had reported a theft of about one billion U.S. dollars from three Moldovan banks, which nearly went bankrupt. Back then, Moldova’s ruling Alliance for European Integration coalition came under severe criticism from foreign donors, including the European Union and the World Bank, which subsequently suspended their financing of the republic.