No ruling party will be able to do unpopular reforms if it does not have sufficient legitimacy, political pundit Dionis Cenusa says in an analysis article for IPN News Agency.
According to him, public opinion will not give a vote of confidence if it is not satisfied with the quality of the rulers. The lower are the criteria for assessing governance by the public, the lesser is the integrity, professionalism and efficiency of the government compared with the governments of the EU member states.
The politologist notes that two conditions are needed to change the state of affairs. On the one hand, in order to increase the toughness of the citizens of the EaP countries, the political arena should be renewed with more transparent and democratic forces, while the rules of the game should be equitable. On the other hand, the national governments of the EU should maintain high democracy standards. If these stop to be models worth being followed for the countries from the Eastern neighborhood, they will turn into examples of countries that are compared with Russia – Hungary or Poland.
Analyzing the polls carried out until 2017, Dionis Cenusa determined that the support provided to an eventual entry into the EU in 2007 decreased from 70% to about 45% in 10 years.
The questions where the pro-EU option was compared with the pro-Eurasian Union one started to be put only in November 2014 (according to IPP data).
In general, it is visible that the perception of the rapprochement with the EU is formulated under the pressure of the defects or failures of the governments that pleaded for joining the EU, from the Party of Communists until the Democratic Party. The latter, together with other pro-European parties that ruled in 2009-2017, “managed” to diminish the pro-EU feelings from about 66% to 39% and to then stimulate them up to 45% in 2017.
The legitimacy of the European course in Moldova is tailored by the behavior of the parties that claim to be pro-European. To remove the parties that simulate the European integration from the game, both the EU and other parties besides the government – the opposition, civil society, and the mass media – should be objective, sincere and coherent when they criticize the government, concluded Dionis Cenusa.
