LONDON Walking through Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, last month I was surprised by the minimal security outside the office of the presidency. With its metallic, orange-reflecting windows the building hardly looked inviting, but there was a steady trickle of people approaching the entrance unchallenged. A policeman stamped about on the corner but made no effort to accost visitors. Across the road the parliament building did not even have a guard outside.

I then remembered that Moldova, one of Europe`s poorest countries, has seen no political violence for almost 20 years, let alone any terrorist threats. So why should its most sensitive buildings need the checkpoints and bag-searches that are the norm in western capitals?

Things changed last week. An angry crowd of mainly young people gathered outside the parliament and the presidency, shouting anti-government slogans. Some were carrying the national flag. Others bore the flags of nearby Romania (with which Moldovans share a common language) and the blue flag of the European Union. The crowd hurled paving stones at police and stormed inside both buildings, where they went on the rampage, stealing files and computers, and burning or trashing others.

The motive for the protest was the fact that the country`s ruling party had just been re-elected to a third parliamentary term with a bigger majority than previous times. It`s rare in any country, but what makes Moldova unique is that the victors were communists. Indeed, it is the only multi-party democracy in the world that has seen communists win nationwide elections that international observers declare to be free and broadly fair, as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe did again last week.

One explanation for their support is that Moldova`s communists are pro-European. They proudly boasted the hammer and sickle on their election posters beside slogans saying “Let`s build Europe together”. The country used to be a Soviet republic but it now exports three times more to the EU than to Russia, and no party can afford not to be “European” if it wants to attract younger voters. For an older generation, which still feels a good deal of ex-Soviet nostalgia, the communists represent order, stability and guaranteed pensions after the turmoil of the 1990s.

On the eve of the election independent opinion polls gave the communists a huge lead, so their victory should not have come as a shock. Why, then, so much anger among the groups whose parties lost? Some put it down to disappointment that the communists managed to keep the country`s looming economic crisis out of the campaign.

Moldova is about to be hit harder than anywhere else in Europe. Its economy relies on remittances from hundreds of thousands of Moldovans working in the EU. More work abroad than in either the private or the public sector in Moldova. With European economies under pressure, many are losing jobs or seeing their pay cut. As a result, remittances in January went down by almost a half.

Moldova has an economy that is lopsided in other ways. Though predominantly an agricultural country, it imports more food than it exports. Even before the crisis 90 per cent of the state budget came from taxes on consumption (VAT, excises on alcohol and cigarettes, and import tariffs), according to Veaceslav Ionita, programme director at the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives. Now, as consumption collapses, the state`s coffers will shrink and the government will be hard pressed to maintain state employees` wages and pensions, let alone provide the increases it promised. But none of this was brought out on the election hustings.

Some protesters claim the communists are turning back to Russia. Others maintain there is government dominance of the media - a charge that is fair only if the full context is accepted. Moldovans can watch Romanian and Ukrainian TV, and the opposition controls at least one national channel in Moldova.

Opposition parties deplore last week`s violence - they claim it was started by pro-communist provocateurs. But why would the government, having just won elections, want to stoke unrest?

It is true that it reacted to last week`s violence with heavy-handedness, arresting around 200 people, beating some in prison and police stations, and not releasing adequate information on who was still held and where. Foreign journalists have been blocked at the borders and access to several opposition websites as well as Facebook and Twitter has been barred, so as to obstruct protesters from mobilising.

But these abuses do not warrant calls for the government to resign, nor for the EU to back demands for a re-run of the elections. They look like sour grapes since there is no evidence of fraud large enough to have awarded the wrong party victory. The EU should urge the government to release every detainee unless there is evidence to charge particular individuals with violence. But it should also urge opposition parties to accept the election results. Moldova`s European image has not been helped by last week`s chaos. Exaggerated claims of fraud are equally out of place.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service