The political trajectory of Bidzina Ivanishvili was beneficial for this in 2018 to have an absolute majority in Parliament, to control the government and many other local authorities, including in the capital city, expert in political sciences Dionis Cenusa says in an analysis article for IPN Agency.
The expert noted that Ivanishvili himself admits that he managed to build a vertical of power after 2016. Owing to the mixed electoral system, the party that is informally controlled by Ivanishvili gained 49% of the vote and, respectively, 77% of the seats in Parliament. Having a constitutional majority, the “Georgian Dream” decided to amend the electoral system and to return to the proportional voting system, managing thus to replace the Venice Commission‘s criticism with positive appraisals.
Dionis Cenusa said the Moldovan political algorithm was more complicated for the swifter concentration of the power by Plahotniuc, who in 2009-2015 ruled by larger coalitions that included yet a more powerful political force – the Liberal Democratic Party (PLDM).
Only in 2016, Plahotniuc’s party started to strengthen its political supremacy, absorbing important segments of the PLDM and the Party of Communists. To create the appearance of a coalition government and, respectively, to redistribute public dissatisfaction, the company of Vladimir Plahotniuc contributed to the formation of the Group of the European People’s Party of Moldova.
Compared with Ivanishvili, the political position of Plahotniuc is challenged by larger categories of people because it was crystalized based on non-democratic and non-electoral schemes.
Therefore, inspired probably by the Georgian experience and the experience of Ukraine, where the presence of oligarchs is even more massive, Vladimir Plahotniuc and the Democratic Party decided to introduce the mixed electoral system in July 2017, neglecting the criticisms of civil society, the opposition and foreign partners.
The hurry with which Vladimir Plahotniuc forced the political decisions in favor of the mixed system (51 seats of MP based on elections in single-member constituencies) is practically inversely proportional to the speed by which Ivanishvili’s party set the period for annulling the mixed system in Georgia. This way, even if the Georgian opposition in 2014 sought the proportional voting system for 2016 already and later for 2020, Ivanishvili’s party set it for 2024 only.
The goal of Vladimir Plahotniuc is to politically supervise his system without which he will not benefit from immunity and, respectively, impunity. For these reasons, Vladimir Plahotniuc ignores the opposition’s criticism and the concerns expressed by foreign partners. For now, the Moldovan oligarchic regime acted with intransigency, provoking negative consequences for the national interests and creating a negative precedent in the region, explained Dionis Cenusa.
