To respond appropriately and operationally, the EU and other external partners need a comprehensive understanding of the triangular interdependencies between the populists, the system’s people and the oligarchic interests, writes the political researcher Dionis Cenuşa in an analytical article for the IPN Agency.

In his opinion, the maneuvering toward mechanical, predictable and controllable governments, albeit at the expense of their own credibility and even longevity, denotes some political developments with similar doses of risk in both Moldova and Ukraine.

The political researcher believes that the excessive preoccupation with the oscillating popularity, stimulated by the proximity of the electoral polls, prevails over the prioritization of the strategic reforms, necessary for the institutional and sectoral welfare of the public interests, as a whole.

He draws several lines of comparison and distinctions between Ukraine and Moldova. The obsession for the centralization of the political power, the orchestrated nature of the political changes, the preferences for the "system’s people" and, finally, the idea of normalizing relations with Russia are highlighted among others.

Dionis Cenuşa looks into the maximalist expectations about "Zelensky’s phenomenon", which, he claims, was too ambitious to determine radical metamorphoses of the Ukrainian political landscape. He compared that to the situation in Moldova and underlined the short duration of the changes in Moldova in mid-2019, occurred under the impact of the idealistic government of Maia Sandu. That left no room for expanding the reform projects, promised in the context of anti-oligarchization.

According to him, the Freedom House Report for 2020 indicates that there is more stagnation than major progress in the two countries, still dominated by politicized justice and acute oligarchic influence. The political researcher rely on these arguments to reiterate the idea that the "anti-oligarchic spring" has failed in the eastern neighborhood of the EU.

After a wave of spontaneity and non-conformity, a return to the "routine politics" has taken place, according to which the informal and conventional governance harmoniously cohabit, the political researcher concludes.