Pepto + Politics

July 20

Pepto J + Politics

Strangely I feel more PC-esque than ever today. I just had to make a special trip to the center of Chisinau to give the doctor a sample of my ailment. I know it’s not pretty but that is the way things are. The doctor believes it is Salmonella, or in other words food poisoning. There is a smaller chance that it could be giardia, which would be bad. Although more than likely I will have that at some point too, the Big G gets a fair percentage of the volunteers here. I feel like it would just be a new badge on my Cub Scout sash. I will not give the details of those afflictions, but you are more than welcome to venture out to fulfill the requirements for your medical awareness badge or at least for some funny pictures or descriptions of what it could be.

Interesting events are nigh here in Moldova. Moldova’s parliamentary election is right around the corner. If you remember back to my initial post, Moldova has done this before. The first election ended with the Communist party winning somewhere around half of the seats and the rest of the parties calling the final vote fraudulent. This is the moment that the riots began to ensue.

Winning a majority of seats is not enough to control the Presidency here. Unlike the US there are quite a few parties here, with about 5 of them getting a sizable portion of the votes. In the system that the US uses it is very rare for a small party to play a decisive role in an election. In most parliamentary systems the small parties play larger roles in electing the prime minister or president. In the case of Moldova it takes 60% of the seats approval for a politician to become the President. The Communist party had less than 60% so they had to bargain with the other parties to get the extra votes needed for their leader to stay in office. Over the last few months the parliament has tried twice to vote someone into office and those attempts have failed. The constitution here calls for a new election after two failed attempts to form a government. The new election is scheduled for the 29^th of July. Well that’s what I know for now in regard to politics. What all this really means for me is that there are some really interesting articles and fliers everywhere in Moldova that I can’t read—in due time I suppose.

Aaron