An uneasy partnership faces the first test of its powers
The
EU needs to prove that it can help prevent electoral fraud, media crackdowns
and violent repression in its own neighbourhood.
The scale and
the violence differ, but the pattern of protests and repression in Tehran now is similar to what we saw two months ago in Chisinau, Moldova's
capital.
Then, too,
demonstrators mobilised themselves with new media and rallied in protest
against perceived fraud in elections. The authorities' response was the same:
to curtail internet and mobile phone services, harass the local media, expel
foreign reporters and blame foreigners for fomenting unrest - and, of course,
bring in the riot police and beat detainees. There are, though, fundamental
differences: Moldova
says it wants to join the EU, the EU has just forged a partnership with it, and
the authorities have been forced to hold another parliamentary election after
the parliament proved too divided to elect a new president.
That vote, on 29
July, will therefore be a major test of the EU. If its Eastern Partnership with
six post-Soviet states is to work, the EU needs partners with democratic
legitimacy. Where better to start than with the first election in the region
since the partnership was unveiled in May?
The EU must
prevent a repeat of the excesses that followed the election in April, in which
hundreds were detained and at least three people battered to death by security
forces. The EU must make it absolutely clear that the election in July must be
fair. A steady stream of delegations must make their way to Moldovan
institutions to ram the point home. Officials must be told that they can forget
about association agreements and free-trade agreements if the election is
tampered with.
It would be good
to have a special EU high representative just for these elections, ready to
intervene at any sign of wrong-doing. Aleksander
Kwas´niewski, Poland's
former president, has been mentioned.
The EU should
also send observers to work alongside those from the Organisation for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Non-governmental organisations did
magnificent work in collecting and publicising information about the repression
(predictably, the government later harassed them with tax investigations), but
they will feel more confident if they have a Spaniard and a Pole alongside them
when they ask officials difficult questions about electoral registers containing
the names of people long dead.
In April, local
journalists were intimidated and foreign reporters expelled. A pre-election
visit by Miklós Haraszti, the OSCE's representative on freedom of the media,
would help. Journalists' organisations should mount fact-finding missions.
The Eastern
Partnership is a truly difficult policy to pursue as it seeks to encourage
EU-compatible and transparent reforms in kleptocracies whose rulers know
reforms will end their political lives. Compounding those difficulties, Russia
has made it very clear that it regards the policy as an encroachment on its
sphere of influence and that it supports the leading figure in Moldovan
politics - ex-president, acting president and now the speaker of parliament,
Vladimir Voronin.
April showed
that pro-EU reforms have genuine allies in Moldova. The EU must not let these
people down. For them and for itself, it should show it supports the principle
of democratic elections.
Krzysztof
Bobinski is the head of Unia & Polska, a pro-European think-tank in Warsaw. Jan Pieklo heads
PAUCI, a Polish-Ukrainian foundation.
This article was published in European Voice