“In the given circumstances, we have to only adopt particular critical attitudes to the mentors and also to the testers. And we should look around observantly so as to rediscover and, eventually, discover new political projects initiated by people free from habits of talkative vigilantes and mentors or testers, who permanently cheat their partners and then complain that they made a mistake.”

Mentorship instead of professional correctness

The opponents and a part of the supporters of President Maia Sandu agree that the latter started to blunder. Two factors contribute decisively to this triumphal march – attitude full of ambiguousness of the messages of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) and the defective filters of the President. It’s rue – the sinusoidal behavior of the PSRM, based on contradictory statements about the overcoming of the governmental crisis, with pleading in favor of the installation of a transitory government and of the swift dissolution of Parliament, had paralyzed the presidential administration’s wish to overcome the governmental crisis for over a month. 

At the same time, President Maia Sandu’s method of constituting her team of advisers and of choosing the new composition of the Supreme Security Council (SSC) saddened a lot her supporters, fuelling the PSRM’s propaganda. To avoid the biased attitudes, we should mention some of the opinions of independent observers:

• appointment of advisers whose experience is irrelevant to the area of responsibility, as in the case of the adviser on security issues;   
• manifestation of double standards in relation to the integrity of former and current colleagues, which becomes evident when comparing Maia Sandu’s attitude to the fake diploma of ex-Premier Kiril Gaburici, on the one hand, and her attitude to the master’s diploma of her own adviser Ala Nemerenco. However, we should admit that the two are competent in their areas of activity. In such situations, public opinion has to admit that the integrity filters of Maia Sandu work in a regime of osmotic membranes, with different promotion and blocking regimes for those from outside and inside the circles in which Missis President is present;
• appointment of members of the SSC  and attitude of mentor to them, but these have real skills and knowledge that the President and the simple promoters of justice speeches do not have. She even warned them about the future preferential treatment, threatening them with ignoring as a remedy for optimizing the activity of the SSC, etc.   

The President’s blundering also impacts the behavior of the Party of Action and Solidary (PAS), which started to show superiority airs in relation to other parliamentary and extraparliamentary parties. This model of behavior could have unexpected consequences in the eventual snap elections for the beheaded PAS. Later, they could complain by saying that woe to the mule that sees not her master.   

Pressure of testosterone vs. quality of tester

The hurt vainglory of ex-president Igor Dodon makes him have a kind of fits. He makes contradictory statements and either pleads for the voting in of an interim Government or wants snap elections to be induced as swiftly as possible. Under the pressure of the shock caused by the loss of the presidential elections, the leader of the PSRM launched all kinds of activities:

• engaged the parliamentary group of the PSRM into a frantic process of adopting one after another a series of laws with an explosive potential so as to leave to his successor as President an unfavorable inheritance that is now dealt with by the Constitutional Court (CC);
• ran to Moscow after assistance in taking over again the management of the PSRM;
• announced the launch of protests against the CC judgment concerning the status of Russian, which would end with a large-scale protest in Chisinau.
• announced the launch of the campaign of almost daily meetings with citizens in the country’s localities, which is a political strategy for remaining afloat and for avoiding the political collapse. Apropos, this is how ex-Premier Vlad Filat acted when he undertook to daily visit localities of the country after he was dismissed from the post of Prime Minister in 2013 and this helped the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) to avoid the collapse, obtaining a relatively good score in the parliamentary elections of 2014.

All the mentioned actions of the leader of the PSRM are accompanied by the hectic activity of the army of trolls and propagandists, which shows that the interest in having snap parliamentary elections is yet great. In the given circumstances, a question appears: if the PSRM wants snap elections rather than the installing of a transitory government, why is the multitude of messages full of ambiguousness needed? It is hard to answer this question, but a possible response is that the leader of the PSRM rediscovered his vocation of tester of the Moldovan politicians because earlier, not only once, Igor Dodon subjected his political partners to testing:

• the first politician tested by the leader of the PSRM in 2011 was his political mentor, the  president of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM), Vladimir Voronin, who was tested on his naivety. In this regard, Igor Dodon signed an oath of allegiance to the PCRM that promoted him to the post of minister. The test had negative consequences for the leader of the PSRM, who was called son of a bitch by his mentor for exposing his naivety;
• the second politician tested by the leader of the PSRM was ex-President Nicolae Timofti, who in March 2012 was tested by Igor Dodon to see how he respected the statehood of the Republic of Moldova. The test was passed and Igor Dodon voted for the election of Nicolae Timofti as President, extending simultaneously the ruling of the Alliance for European Integration (AEI) and, especially, of some of its components by seven years, until 2019. The truth is that the testing of Nicolae Timofti could not have negative results, as a matter of fact. Or Igor Dodon risked being simply expelled from politics in the snap parliamentary elections. Four years later, Igor Dodon a regretted the results of the test, blessing the Presidential Palace in which his predecessor, who proved to be able to represent the state as a result of the test, worked;
• the third politician tested by the leader of the PSRM was the executive coordinator of the government Vlad Plahotniuc, who, as a result of a skillful political chess game, was eliminated from Moldovan politics in June 2019. Currently, Igor Dodon regrets the results of the test on the capacities of Plahotniuc, asserting that Maia Sandu is more dangerous. It’s clear why – Plahotniuc helped Dodon to become President in 2016, while Maia Sandu, with whom he formed a coalition after the elimination of Plahotniuc, took away the presidential office from him in 2020.     

So, we convinced ourselves that practically all the tests done by the leader of the PSRM initially produced the results wanted by Igor Dodon, but were later regretted. Therefore, we see that the leader of the PSRM does not renounce his vocation of tester and plans the next exercise of the kind. After the nomination of ex-minister of finance Natalia Gavriliță as Prime Minister by President Maia Sandu, the leader of the PSRM stated the following: "I think the Socialist parliamentary group must take part in the parliamentary hearings and debates on the program and composition of the Government so as to show to the people the quality and professionalism of the new/old team of Maia Sandu"! So, the overcoming of the political crisis matters less. What is important is to test the team of Maia Sandu so that the people see what they lost by voting for her in the presidential elections to the detriment of Igor Dodon.

Conclusions

After a series of electoral exercises, the political class of the Republic of Moldova does not seem to be improving. On the contrary, it seems that we have permanent backsliding. It turns out that the long-awaited change and return to normality do not come closer, but distance themselves. Instead of a political competition based on the values declared by the main political players, society is attracted into a repulsive show of politicians with inclinations for mentor and tester.

In the given circumstances, we have to only adopt particular critical attitudes to the mentors and also to the testers. And we should look around observantly so as to rediscover and, eventually, discover new political projects initiated by people free from habits of talkative vigilantes and mentors or testers, who permanently cheat their partners and then complain that they made a mistake.