Foreign Digest: Moldova, Venezuela, Austria and Georgia

Moldova: The pro-European Union membership referendum won in Moldova last weekend. The pro-Western President leads the presidential election, but is short of a majority and will face a runoff in November, as expected. The European Union cited an unprecedented degree of Russian interference in the vote in the former Soviet Republic against both the referendum and the President. Russia has long maintained troops in a breakaway part of the former Soviet Republic inhabited by Russian speakers on the border with Ukraine. Austria: A far-right party won 29% of the vote in the Austrian parliamentary elections earlier late last month. Because no other party, including the main conservative (center-right) party, was willing to enter into a coalition government with the far-right, the President has given a mandate to the leader of the conservatives, the current Chancellor whose party earned the second-highest total of votes, to form a government. The developments in Austria are like what I posted about recently in France, where a center-right-led Government blocked both the far right and the far left from power. The election defeat by conservatives of the far-right in Poland was the first example of a resurgent center-right versus the anti-migrant, authoritarian and often pro-Russian far-right. Venezuela: The conservative Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, and the presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won the Sakharov Award. The prestigious award was named after the Soviet nuclear scientist and dissident. The former ambassador Gonzalez won the most votes in the Venezuelan presidential elections in July, but the ruling Socialist dictatorship declared itself the winner, despite the abundant documentary evidence to the contrary from the precincts, in results that have not gained widespread international acceptance. Venezuela’s Socialists have ruled the South American State for 25 years, after winning an election and then becoming increasingly authoritarian, persecuting the opposition and not permitting freedom of expression or free and fair elections. Millions of Venezuelans have fled in the largest mass exodus in history. Georgia: The increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian ruling party claimed victory in Georgia’s parliamentary elections yesterday, but several groups of European election observers, including from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have cited hatred, intimidation and pressure, and a lack of impartiality of election officials in undermining confidence in the results. The Georgian opposition maintains the election results are being stolen. The opposition and the pro-Western President and have cited Russian interference and vote buying, while the ruling party parroted Russian propaganda and disinformation. Russia had invaded the former Soviet Republic in 2008, seizing territory and setting up puppet states, and then encroaching further onto Georgian territory and refusing to leave. The Georgian Constitution requires Georgia to pursue membership in the European Union, a goal which the Georgian Government claims to support, but which it undermines with authoritarianism, particularly the Russian-style “foreign agents” law that criminalizes media and organizations that accept foreign funding. The EU has expressed skepticism of the election results. Georgia’s Constitution also requires pursuit of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defensive pact led by the United States. Most Georgians prefer to be integrated into Europe, instead of under Russian dominance.