TENS of thousands of protesters gathered in the Moldovan capital Chisinau yesterday to protest against the country’s new government and demand new elections. Trouble erupted on Wednesday when demonstrators broke into parliament in protest against the swearing-in of the pro-EU administration of Pavel Filip – the nation’s third government in under a year.

Days of unrest have followed, with pro-EU and pro-Russian groups uniting against the country’s ruling elite, which they say has been using pro-EU rhetoric to cover up rampant corruption crippling one of Europe’s poorest nations, which lies between Romania and Ukraine. As temperatures fell to -10C, protesters shouted “We want the country back!” and later began a march toward the Constitutional Court. TV news reports and drone footage brought home the scale of the mobilisation, with police cordoning off all of Chisinau’s administrative buildings, and estimates of eventual numbers of protesters reached 100,000.

“We all decided to come together in unison against this criminal regime,” pro-EU opposition leader Andrei Nastase told protestors on Friday. “We have abandoned party flags and party symbols. We have only one demand: to return democracy to the country.” The protesters are made up of three groups. DA is a pro-EU social platform whose members are in the process of mobilising to form a political party to stand in elections. PSRM is a pro-Russian socialist party, whose leader Igor Dodon is a key figure in the protests. The third group, PN, is another pro-Russian party whose leader is Renato Usatii.

The primary target of the protesters’ wrath is the oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, an energy and banking tycoon who has long been seen as the puppetmaster behind successive Moldovan governments, and who the protesters say will continue to control things if Filip’s government is allowed to rule.

WHAT'S THE BACKGROUND

MOLDOVA was ruled by a pro-European coalition of three parties from 2009, the leaders of which were Vlad Filat, Mihai Ghimpu, and Marian Lupu, with the latter widely recognised as a tool of Plahotniuc. Things were reasonably stable for a few years but the coalition began to unravel in 2013 with a public feud between Filat and Plahotniuc. Filat was eventually dismissed as prime minister in spring 2013 following charges of corruption.

The country has been has been mired in instability since, and has had five prime ministers in the last year. Parliament would have been dissolved if it had failed to approve a government by January 29. Moldova is often seen as being the subject of a tug of war between Russia and the EU. This situation that was brought into sharper relief by the country’s inking of a partnership agreement with the EU in 2014, which established closer political and economic bonds between the country and the West and was strongly opposed by Moscow.

What led to the current protests?

ALTHOUGH the reasons for the wave of trouble are complex, the most important trigger was a corruption scam that saw $1billion disappear from the country’s banking system last year and led to the arrest of former prime minister Filat in October, with TV pictures showing the ex-leader handcuffed in parliament and marched away by masked officials from an anti-corruption bureau.

Despite Filat’s arrest, outrage has risen steadily at the authorities’ failure to properly investigate the theft, with popular discontent exacerbated by poor living standards in a country where the average monthly salary is just £168

“The stolen billion was the worst possible confirmation of what people suspected might be going on in terms of lack of integrity among the political class,” analyst Nicu Popescu of the European Union Institute for Security Studies said.

WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?

DURING a rally on Friday, Dodon announced the creation of the so-called Committee of National Salvation, and the protestors have vowed not to give up until new elections are held. Moldova is at a crossroads, with the choice before it being rule by an oligarch government, or early elections, which could see pro-Russian forces swept to power and a lurch away from Europe and towards Moscow and Vladimir Putin.

“The best thing that the new government of Filip could do is to resign,” Chisinau-based economist Elena Gorelova was quoted as saying. “The appointment of the new government has just meant a deepening of the political crisis in Moldova. And this isn’t just a crisis between different political groups, it is a stand-off between the people and the authorities.”

“On the surface, Moldova’s prospects are bleak and uncertain,” analyst David Dalton of the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit said.

“What they needed is wide-scale social mobilisation, in alignment with progressive parts of the political, financial, business and state elite to push thorough going institutional reforms... in short, a political and social revolution.”