The government managed to appropriately manage the situation in central Chisinau and to restore public order on the main artery of the city, expert in civil society, comparable policies and propaganda Mark Mazureanu stated in a public debate hosted by IPN News Agency. According to him, even if the police limited the citizens’ right to protest, this limitation was reasonable.
Representatives of the Shor Party said that yesterday’s protest involved 70,000 people, while the police said that slightly over 6,000 people attended this. Mark Mazureanu noted that if the costs incurred by the protest organizers are made public, the real number of protesters can be easily determined.
“A party incurs costs in the organizational process and it needs to declare the costs. Any political party that mobilizes the people inflates the figures to give the impression that they mobilized more people. The undeclared resources are a problem. In Moldova, the use of resources in election campaigns was always nontransparent. The protests are one more example when cash is used and we therefore cannot assess the number of mobilized people and the used transport,” stated Mark Mazureanu.
According to him, even if the number of protesters yesterday was larger than in the protests mounted the previous weeks, the protesting people anyway do not have the capacity to replace the power.
“In our case, we have a precarious economic situation and have not the best foreign policy situation but the protests, even if they expand, will not produce the results wanted by the political forces. The protest appears as a form of pressure when the central administration does not have reasonable time to solve the arising problems. The protest is a form of resistance. I’m not in favor of protest but the protests in principle should cause discomfort. The greater is the discomfort caused by the protest, the more insistently is the public administrator pushed to take action,” stated the expert.
Yesterday, the police took away the tents put up by protesters in central Chisinau. Today, President Maia Sandu welcomed the calm intervention by the police, which restored public order downtown.
Mark Mazureanu said he would give the grade 9 to the way in which the problem was solved. The intervention was within the legal limits and was well explained to the public. The press realized the message relatively well and transmitted this. There were incidents but it happens so when there is coercion. The limitations of rights were reasonable and proportional.
The public debate entitled “Antigovernment protests: motives, demands, players, actions and effects” is the 264th series of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
