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A boy in Pridnestrovie helps his ethnic Russian father drop his vote in the ballot box for Sunday's parliamentary elections

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - Ethnic Russians with double citizenship were able to vote in Duma (lower house of parliament) elections at 24 polling stations throughout Transdniestria this Sunday. This was in sharp contrast to Moldova, where the government would not allow any voting to take place outside Embassy premises.

Twenty-four electoral districts were opened in Pridnestrovie, where the authorities collaborated with Russia's election staff in order to let Russian citizen exercise their democratic right to vote.

In Moldova, the government refused to collaborate and only one single voting station could be opened inside the premises of the Russian embassy in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital. This was the first time that Russians were forced to vote inside the embassy. In previous years, the embassy had been allowed to install polling stations both in the north and south of the country, which apart from Chisinau are traditional strongholds with significant Russian-speaking minorities.

As a result, less than 2,500 Russian citizens were able to cast their vote at the sole polling station in their Embassy in Chisinau.

This was in sharp contrast to the "democracy fest" on the other side of the Dniester: In the much-smaller Transdniestria, a whopping 45,864 of Russian citizens turned out to vote in the elections to Russia's Duma, the PMR Parliamentary Press Service reported.

On Sunday, expat Russians voted in a total of 140 different countries in the world.

Cleansing of ethnic Russian minorities in Moldova

According to the latest census, which took place in 2004, there are 168,270 ethnic Russians living in Transdniestria. Of these, approximately 120,000 also hold Russian citizenship, leaving nearly 50,000 who are ethnic Russians but who have not yet applied for the citizenship.

The amount of ethnic Russians in Transdniestria has stayed largely unchanged since the fall of the USSR: The last Soviet census, in 1989, showed that ethnic Russians made up 25.5% of a population of 601,660 - equivalent to 153,423 Russians, or just 15,000 less than today.

In Moldova, the numbers show a different story. There, the ethnic Russian minority population has been driven out by policies which don't allow them to vote and which prevent them from holding leadership positions in government.

At the time of the 1989 census, 13% of Moldova's inhabitants were ethnic Russians. Fifteen years later, according to both the CIA World Factbook and the country's own 2004 census, the number of ethnic Russians had been reduced to a mere 5.8%.

" - This is a result of ethnic cleansing," said a Russian who asked not to be identified. Earlier, Chisinau councilman Valery Klimenko referred to the persecution of minorities in the same terms.

When Russia announced that it would protect the right of its citizens to vote, and that it would do so by setting up polling stations in Transdniestria, Moldova protested the move as "interference in domestic affairs" despite the fact that Moldova exercises no sovereign control over Transdniestria.

The Moldovan Foreign Ministry ruled that Russia could only provide voting facilities at its embassy in Moldova's capital, Chisinau. In a public statement, the Moldovan regime claimed that "the opening of stations in Transnistria" was "an illicit action" and "in contravention of international law."

However, the United Nations, in addressing basic human rights, states that minorities should be allowed to freely cast their votes in democratic elections in the same way that dominant ethnic groups do, with no discrimination of any kind. Whereas Transdniestria allowed free access to more than twenty different polling stations, the same was not true in Moldova.

Win for "United Russia"

According to the Central Electoral Commission, 83.8% of the voters supported the United Russia party. The Communist party of the Russian Federation was supported by 4%. LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) got 5%, and 5.2% cast their votes for the Fair Russia Party.

With their support for United Russia, voters in Transdniestria rejected the preferred choice the country's President. In the run-up to the vote, Transdniestria's President, Igor Smirnov, and the state-run TV channel TV PMR had been campaigning for the Fair Russia party. Smirnov's daughter in law, Marina Smirnova, stood as a candidate for Fair Russia but failed to win election.

In Transdniestria, United Russia received the support of the largest opposition party, Renewal. Renewal leader Yevgeny Shevchuk said that it was important that Russia offered opportunities for Russian citizens residing in Transdniestria to take part in the elections and to exercise their right to vote.

According to the opposition politician and current Speaker of Parliament, the voting process is an element of the unity of Russians that is really important for those citizens of Russia who live in an unrecognized country and therefore find themselves in a more difficult situation than other Russians.

Transdniestria - which is officially named Pridnestrovie, and which is unofficially also known under names such as Transnistria or Trans-Dniester - declared independence in 1990. The young country suffered through 1992 war which was launched by Moldova against separatist fighters who defended their right to self-determination. Moldova has never recognized this right, and although a ceasefire has been signed, no formal armistice has been reached and the two sides are still technically at war while erratic negotiations are held on and on-and-off basis to determine the legal status of the future relations between them.

See also:
» Chisinau councilman warns about ethnic cleansing in Moldova [1]
» Banning double citizenship widens gulf between Moldova and Transnistria [2]
» Moldova's ethnic-based independence movement and the River of Blood [3]

Opinion and commentary:
» "Massive" ethnic cleansing in Transnistria [4]