When Ana-Maria Popa and her four colleagues are stopped by the police, they have barely left Chișinău. There’s only a few cars on the road this early in the morning. It is 23 February, a cold, snowy Saturday, the day before Moldova’s parliamentary elections. The group is driving to Nisporeni, a 20,000-strong city where Vladimir Plahotniuc, oligarch and chairman of the ruling Democratic Party, is to speak to potential voters. Ana-Maria Popa and others want to hold a protest outside the venue, to raise awareness about corruption in national politics. The car’s trunk is packed with drums.
“Do you have papers for these drums?” the policeman asks. “These are our drums,” the driver responds. “Where are the papers with the names of the owners?” The discussion continues for more than half an hour. A second, third and fourth police car arrives. One of the activists films the scene. In the days that follow, this Facebook video will receive more than 2,400 comments, 286,700 views and 6,000 shares.
Only when a second group of activists, who are accompanied by a foreign TV crew, reaches the scene, do the police leave. But before that, the officers make each of the activists line up in a queue, state their name and declare that they are the legal owner of the drums. “This is ridiculous,” one user comments; “Let’s vote,” another.
