Representatives of political parties, including informal ones, already started to make forecasts about the results of the parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019. It happened in the talk show “Emphasis on today” broadcast by TVR channel on December 5, 2019. Surely, the prognostications benefit the TV channels and attract public attention, but they have been useless for a period and this was confirmed by the absolutely unusable forecasts about the last mayoral elections held in Chisinau. Polls do not correctly show at least the order of politicians in voters’ preferences, not mentioning the percentage quota as the time is turbulent and the people prefer to hide their sympathies. And they are right as, if a candidate wins somehow the elections, no one can be sure they will hold the gained seat.
In the mentioned program, the protagonists were persons with different political identities: spokesman for the ruling Democratic Party (PDM) Vitalie Gamurari; vice president of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLDM) Ion Terguță, and one of the founders of the Euro-Unionist Convention of Moldova (CEU) Valentin Dolganiuc. As all the participates claimed they share pro-European views, the representative of the ruling party set the tone. He said the PDM is ready to have a dialogue with any political party that is likely to enter the next Parliament and has the same views on the construction of the country.
This assertion deserves to be devoted attention as it is actually a template. If they want, any party could undertake such a statement. For example, the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) shares with the PDM the same pro-Moldova rhetoric concerning the building of the civic nation, establishment of balanced relations with the West and the East, etc. That’s why the representative of PDM had to specify“I refer to the European development course.” Regrets appear here. It’s a pity that the representative of the PDM didn’t develop the issue of the European course to explain how: selective justice; invalidation of elections for invented reasons; deliberate ignoring of explicit recommendations of European partners; criticism of the last resolutions of the European Parliament match this course. The PSRM can also embrace such an allegedly European course, especially after the statements about the work done on a plan for Moldova’s entry into the EU made by the informal leader of the PSRM Igor Dodon this June. We can discuss if it is worth placing a greater emphasis on the PDM’s statements than on the PSRM’s statements. And this thing matters.
To seem convincing, the representative of the PDM made reproaches against the Party “Dignity and Truth Platform” (PPDA) and the Party “Action and Solidarity” (PAS), which he yet considers able to enter Parliament. The reproaches are reduced to the fact that the two parties have a critical attitude to the ruling party: ”If an alliance to prevent the Party of Socialists from coming to power could be created after the elections, a question appears – what is more important – the personal ego or the national interest of the state. This is the policies – to negotiate and reach a comprise”.
The call to delimit the national interest from the personal interests or the narrow party interests is welcome, but a series of questions appear here. We must realize that selective justice is in the national interest. Those who challenge it do it for personal or group interests? Also, did the invalidation of the Chisinau mayoral elections pursue a national interest that could not be understood by the opposition leaders? In this case, what national interest does the PDM pursue by trying to form a post-electoral alliance with the two parties whose leaders were publicly accused of serving the interests of Russia in the hybrid war waged against Moldova, alongside the PSRM? Doesn’t this argument show that outside the somehow differentiated rhetoric, the PDM and PSRM share the same values?
In this context, the vice president of the PLDM Ion Terguță suggested his variant of setting the national priorities that would prevail over the narrow party interests: “The PLDM is interested in freeing the Republic of Moldova from the current PD government that is very dangerous. Our only goal is to save the country. We will think later about the party.” The representative of the PLDM overlooked yet the fact that there were moments when the current elder of the PDM applauded the accomplishments of the government coalition, alongside the PLDM.
It happened right before the parliamentary elections of November 2014, in an interview for the prestigious European journal Europolitics: “The economic growth in Moldova was of 8.9%, which is the highest one all over Europe – from the Atlantic to the Urals – in 2013… Furthermore, if we look at the last report of the World Bank, of 2014, we see the Republic of Moldova saw an advance of 19 positions compared with the previous year. We speak about concrete, verifiable figures”. This assessment is precious as it shows that before the PDM took over in 2016, even double economic growth than the one ensured now by the PDM was recorded in particular years.
To calm down the polemists of the PDM and PLDM, CEU founder Valentin Dolganiuc anticipated that the Party of Socialists can win over 50% of the seats of MP in the next legislature. Such a forecast was made too early yet. One day later, on December 7, 2018, the PDM published a press release by which it announced that it ascertained a number of violations of the Election Code committed by some of the parties. The PSRM is among those that violated the Election Code as it designated candidates for the future parliamentary elections several months before the legal limits. No one can say for sure, but this violation can be described by the Moldovan judiciary as much more serious than electoral agitation on the Internet on the election day, especially because the PSRM was the initiator of the challenge concerning the impact of the online agitation on the election outcome. Why shouldn’t the harshness of the law impact the PSRM as firmly?
In conclusion, we can say that it is in the PSRM’s interest to somehow avoid obtaining an absolute majority of seats of MP in the elections of February 24, 2019. It should better win fewer than 50% of the seats and remain with the hope that it will be invited by the PDM to form a coalition rather than to be eliminated from the political life, as it happened to the Party “Patria” in 2014. Then the PSRM was the main beneficiary of the elimination of “Patria”, as it was in the case of the invalidation of the mayoral elections in 2018. The forecasters should know that they should stop making prognostications as these can bebased not on real tendencies, but rather on the unpredictable behavior of our judicial system.
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