What is the connection between the five persons below?

So Saakashvili is the President of Georgia, right? And Basescu is the President of Romania. Moreover, Voronin is the President of Moldova. Good.

Now it gets more complicated. The breakaway region of South Ossetia (small area bordering Russia, with a population of less than100,000) has not one, but two governments. One is led by a chap called Kokoity, elected by the Ossetian population and supporting secession. The second one is led by Mr. Sanakoev, formerly involved with the separatist struggle of the Ossetians. Since those days he mysteriously switched sides and finds himself at the helm of a Tbilisi-sponsored government. He was elected with votes from Georgian-controlled villages in the region and backs Saakashvili’s policies of keeping an autonomous South Ossetia within Georgia.

Back to the point. Sanakoev is in Brussels these days, in a public relations campaign aimed at winning the Europeans over while establishing his European credentials. This is where it gets interesting, and where Voronin, and especially Basescu come into the equation.

Talking to the EU-Georgian Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, Sanakoev delivered a speech (in Ossetian!), which included the following sentence: “Georgia is coming back to Europe and with Georgia, my region – South Ossetia – should also go back to Europe.” More about this here: http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=15335

This kind of discourse reminds me of the kind of speeches Basescu was making regarding Moldova, using EU integration as an instrument for facilitating the rapprochement of the two countries (a better word would probably be “unification”). In a declaration made during the hot summer of 2006, Basescu made a puzzling statement, saying that “Romania has given the Republic of Moldova the chance to join together the European Union,” while at the same time “recognizing Moldovan authorities’ wish to be an independent state.” More on this here.

Basescu’s words can be translated as “Romania is coming back to Europe and with Romania, Moldova should also go back to Europe.” See the similarities?

I wonder if this kind of discourse will work with the Ossetians. My guess is that, for many of them, the EU still seems a distant prospect (if not necessarily a dream), while Russia is much less distant and more real.

In the case of Moldova, with over 1 million people already working in the EU, the Union is definitely a less distant prospect. Therefore, most Moldovans might be more susceptible to Basescu’s rhetoric than Ossetians from the Tskhinvali region.

Another issue where the parallel between Moldova and the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia works in an interesting (if controversial) way is “passportization.” Russia has been facilitating the issuing of passports for Ossetians and Abkhaz people, making them de iure citizens of Russia. This, of course, made the Tbilisi government very upset, and plugged into the usual accusations of a Russian grand conspiracy behind Georgia’s minority problems.

It’s been many years now that Moldovans have been queueing to get Romanian citizenship – and thus passports. Basescu recently claimed that Romania had 800,000 active applications for citizenship from Moldovans. Check out this article for more on this.

The benefits accrued by Moldovans with Romanian citizenship are similar to those of Abkhazians or Ossetians with Russian citizenship: both passports open up access to travel and work abroad, which would be much more difficult otherwise in the Moldovan case, and nearly impossible in the Abkhaz or Ossetian case (since neither state is officially recognized by the international community, travel documents issued by the de facto governments are virtually worthless).

I am aware that my above comments have probably caused rage among most of my Romanian friends (of course I know that Moldovans are really Romanians and thus have the right to a Romanian citizenship). Having said that, I think that drawing a parallel between Moldova and the two separatist regions nevertheless is an interesting framework for looking at these issues.

Coming up in my next posts:

• Tbilisi night life: Taking control of Traffic Bar
• Why the Romanian President may have his approval ratings increase by up to 10 points by the end of July.