April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election protests

April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election protests
Protests in Chişinău after the April 2009 elections
Location	Chișinău, Cahul, Orhei, Bălți 13 cities in Romania, including Bucharest Washington, D.C., Boston, New York City London
Date	6–12 April 2009
Deaths	4
Non-fatal injuries	270
Perpetrators	Anti-communist demonstrators, including supporters of pro-Romanian opposition parties, Romanian students and pro-EU activists
No. of participants	Protesters: around 50,000

External video

Protests in Moldova on YouTube

Protest Moldova, Chisinau 07.04.2009 on YouTube

Revolution in Chișinău, Moldova on YouTube

Tensions in Moldova on YouTube

Protests against the April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election, known in Romanian as Revolta de la Chișinău (the Chișinău revolt), began on 6 April 2009, in major cities of Moldova (including Bălţi and the capital, Chişinău) before results were announced. The demonstrators claimed that the elections, which saw the governing Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) win a majority of seats, were fraudulent, and alternatively demanded a recount, a new election, or resignation of the government. Similar demonstrations took place in other major Moldovan cities, including the country's second largest, Bălţi, where over 7,000 people protested.

Some of the protesters discussed and organized themselves using Twitter, hence its moniker used by the media, the Twitter Revolution. In Chişinău, where the number of protesters rose above 30,000, the demonstration escalated into a riot on 7 April. Rioters attacked the parliament building and presidential office, breaking windows, setting furniture on fire and stealing property.

The unrest began as a public protest after the announcement of preliminary election results on 6 April 2009, which showed the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova victorious, winning approximately 50% of the votes. Final results, published on 8 April, showed that the PCRM garnered 49.48% of the vote, gaining 60 parliament seats – one less than the three-fifths required for the party to control the presidential election. The opposition rejected the election results, accusing the authorities of falsification in the course of counting the votes and demanded new elections.

The PCRM has been in power since 2001. A series of protests have been organized by opposition parties in 2003, when the government attempted to replace the school subject "History of the Romanians" with "History of Moldova". Students protested for months before the government backed down on its plans.

Petru Negură, a university professor of sociology at the Moldova State University and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, France, attributed the origins of the crisis to the ethnic identity problem: some people in Moldova identify themselves as "Moldovans", while others as "Romanians".