Andrei Nastase, the leader of the Dignity and Truth Platform Party (PDA) has published an open letter to mayors across the country urging them to show solidarity with the people who voted them and join the anti-government rally on August 26.

“Moldova passes through troubled times, ordinary people can’t endure the living conditions anymore, and the government is unable to guarantee decent lives to citizens. It is difficult to administrate a community where no business can be made to run properly, where no conditions exist to stimulate small enterprises and there is no purchasing power to buy goods and services”, reads the open letter.

Andrei Nastase goes on to say that he knows how hard it is to earn a mayor’s bread in Moldova, where young, working-age people flee their communities, leaving behind their children in pensioned grandparents’ care. “All the problems facing villages and towns need urgent solutions.”

Nastase adds he knows that, from 2013 to 2017, prosecutors had been pressured by the government into starting more than one hundred criminal cases against mayors from opposition parties, and because of modest earnings, few mayors can afford the services of a lawyer. Further, according to Nastase, the government keeps mayors under constant surveillance seeking to control everything at local level.