I bet you are bored with Election Observation protocol, so I will reward your patience with what really happens in the field.
The framework was as described but of course every EOM is slightly different. On Thursday evening six of us went to the Moldovan National Opera and Ballet House. It was built in 1980 and looks like it from the outside. The auditorium is a little austere but was way ahead, I think, of western opera houses then; clad in wood with excellent acoustics and sight-lines. Best seats cost 200 Lei – thats less than £10 – and the house was by no means full. Whether it was the high price or the opera was unclear. We saw Rimsky- Korsakov’s, “The Czar’s Bride”. This is a long, boring opera and I left in the first interval so can hardly write a proper review.
I went with my Italian STO partner (F) and one of her Italian colleagues, an Irish and two American STOs. They stayed for the full stretch (3 1/2 hours). I told F the next morning that she couldn’t rely on me to stick out a long Election Day if I couldn’t manage more than an hour at the opera. She tried not to look worried.
On Friday morning I went to the National Art Museum. Some of the pictures were to my liking – they were mostly by artists in the former Soviet Union. The work by Western European artists was poor. The building itself was almost an exhibit in itself. It ws not crowded.
On Friday afternoon F and I met our translator and driver briefly. Saturday was our day to get to know each other as we explored our Area of Observation a residential suburb of Chisinau. We visited the District Electoral Council (DEC) and met the Chairman. Little did I know our next meeting – equally cordial – would be at 2.15 am on Monday morning.Then it took us six hours to find most of the twelve polling stations on our patch. They were usually in schools and surprisingly hard to find. In fact our driver never really cracked the geography and we often got lost but most of the lostness happened that Saturday morning.
On Saturday evening F and her Italian friend took me for supper in the hotel. They brought some election handbooks to revise in case conversation faltered. I brought “Barchester Towers” to read in Moldova but so far (Monday) I have read 22 pages. I found myself re-reading information supplied by ODIHR and the Moldovan government often – actually up to the early hours of Monday morning.
We had an early and abstemious night on Saturday. We had to start at 6.00 m on Sunday morning. It was a nasty moment when the hotel reception called to say the car was waiting – it was 3.30 am by my alarm clock. The clock had stopped, it was 6.04 and my three colleagues were waiting. I was down in the lobby in record time – rather dishevelled – and we were at our first polling station at 6.25 to observe their opening procedures.
To be continued.