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Vladimir Voronin Vladimir Nicolae Voronin (born May 25, 1941) has been the President of Moldova since April 7 2001. He is the leader of the Party of the Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) which holds 71 of the 101 seats in the Moldovan parliament, the largest of the three parties in the chamber. Voronin, a former bakery director and police general, rose through the ranks of the Communist Party and was briefly Soviet-era interior minister at the end of the 1980s and prime minister at the end of the 1990s. Voronin was elected to power as a supporter of Moldova's integration into the CIS and especially into the Union of Russia and Belarus. He has described Moldova as a European Cuba, claiming Moldova must hold out against 'imperialist predators' in Europe as Cuba had in the Americas. Voronin's tenure has been marked by up and down relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The assistance of these international financial institutions is critical because large government debts must be rescheduled. Politically, Voronin has maintained his commitment to the reduction of poverty by allocating more resources to social safety net items such as health, education, and increasing pensions and salaries. However, Moldova remains Europe's poorest nation. From January to April 2002, large demonstrations took place in opposition to several controversial government proposals, including expanded use of the Russian language in schools and its designation as an official language. While the demonstrations were sometimes tense, the government did not use force. In 2003, Voronin's government backtracked over signing a Russian-proposed settlement with the leadership of the separatist Transnistria region, which would have granted it federal powers. In 2004, Voronin branded the Transnistria region's leaders "a transnational criminal group" and ordered an economic blockade of Transnistria after the breakaway region closed Moldovan speaking schools. Voronin also refused to attend the CIS summit in September of that year as relations between Russia and Moldova soured over the Transnistria issue. In early 2005, he led his Communist party to victory in parliamentary elections on an anti-Russian platform. On April 4 2005 he was easily reelected by Parliament to a second term as president. Voronin, Vladimir Voronin, Vladimir Voronin
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