AUTHORITARIAN TONE CREEPS INTO MOLDOVAN POLITICS.

A congress of Moldovan president Mircea Snegur’s Party of Rebirth and Reconciliation on July 13 nominated Snegur as its candidate for reelection as president in the November 17 presidential balloting. In an appeal to the people of Moldova, the congress described the Agrarian Democratic parliamentary majority and the government as pro-Communist, "anti-people," "anti-patriotic," and trying to transform Moldova into a Soviet-type "colony." The appeal blamed the hardships of the economic transition entirely on the Agrarian majority and the government of Prime Minister Andrei Sangheli, Snegur’s main rival in the coming election. In a special document on interethnic relations, the congress denounced "linguistic separatism," described "ethnically-based parties" as illegitimate, and accused parties representing ethnic minority interests of "hostility toward our state." The congress announced plans to launch a "Popular Movement to Support Candidate Snegur" and to hold a giant rally in Chisinau. (Basapress, Flux, July 13 and 15)

Snegur, the Sangheli government, and the Agrarian parliamentary majority have jointly implemented the reforms in cooperation with international financial institutions and to the approval of donor governments. But Snegur has recently undermined the reform policy through his populist and inflationary proposals. The president is also repudiating his own former policy of linguistic concessions to and political cooperation with the ethnic minorities; he now courts his former adversaries in the pro-Romanian camp in the hope of engineering an ethnically polarized election. Sangheli is considered favored to win unless parliament chairman Petru Lucinschi’s candidacy divides the non-nationalist Moldovan vote.

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