“The scarecrows and smokescreens launched by the PSRM are aimed at diverting public opinion away from a series of very pressing problems related to the freeing of state institutions from the fugitive oligarchs’ control.”
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Intrigue of snap elections
The political parties that announced their participation in the snap parliamentary elections exhibit their campaign themes. During two years since executive coordinator Vlad Plahotniuc fled the country, the Moldovan political class has struggled either for the assimilation of the inheritance of this or for getting rid of this. This struggle actually represents the main intrigue of the snap parliamentary elections. In general, it can be said that the pro-Eurasian parties form part of the category of assimilators, while the pro-European ones of the category of pretenders of Plahotniuc’s inheritance.
The differentiation between the two options has well-founded explanations. The Plahotniuc phenomenon is an exclusive product of the government of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) of 2001-2009. This personage managed to become very influential at the Royal Court (see min. 0.40) of President Vladimir Voronin, leaving an unfavorable imprint on the recent history of the Republic of Moldova. Returning to the PCRM’s role, we should note that the taking of this out of hibernation and its artificial reanimation by the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) are aimed at strengthening the pole of assimilators of Plahotniuc’s inheritance. As the ascension of the latter occurred during the rule of the PCRM, it is logical that the assimilation of his inheritance should take place also around the leader of the PCRM Vladimir Voronin, who heads the list of the electoral bloc of the Communists and the Socialists.
The unnatural hierarchy of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists, from the viewpoint of the electoral weight (see page 35), is based on the repentance of the leader of the PSRM for the betrayal he committed earlier in relation to the PCRM. But the act of repentance cannot annul the intrinsic promise of the PSRM, which recently formed a parliamentary majority with the Shor Party, which is with the representative of the bandits and mafia (min.07.00-15.21) and which is one of the main perpetrators of the bank theft in favor of Plahotniuc. This way, before the snap parliamentary elections, the interests intersect each other, creating a very suggestive configuration. The protection and promotion of these interests implies a merciless electoral struggle between the assimilators and the pretenders to Plahotniuc’s inheritance.
The main opponent of the Communists and Socialists, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), is only one of the representatives of the protest movement against the organizers and beneficiaries of the bank theft. Its task is to clear Parliament so as to bring to an end the freeing of state institutions from the captivity of the fugitive oligarchs and their heirs. Regrettably, the PAS was unable to form a common front as an alternative to the Communist-Socialist bloc that would have claimed Plahotniuc’s inheritance with maximum efficiency. In this regard, the PAS remains hostage to the vigilante message that it has promoted linearly and in an insipid way.
Against the pretenders to Plahotniuc’s inheritance, the other political parties are trying to find own electoral niches or to decide methods of running in elections – individually, as part of electoral blocs or on common lists of candidates. The unionist parties, for example, are in the process of identifying the most representative of them, with potential to attract other unionist parties for passing the election threshold. For now, the unionist segment maintains the necessity of the unity of unionists and the geopolitical character of any electoral competition of the Republic of Moldova. In the aforementioned circumstances, the new parties that were registered recently and get ready for their first electoral campaign – seven in number – could give a breath of fresh air to the electoral campaign and to Moldovan politics.
Electoral smokescreens
In the upcoming snap parliamentary elections, new approaches and ideas are fully absent. The more experienced parties are trying to reformulate old ideas and messages so as to explore them again. Their creativity stops at the exhibition of the own virtues and condemnation of the real or imaginary vices of the opponents. In the absence of fresh ideas, they try to maneuver in a sometimes hallucinating way. The formation of the Communist-Socialist bloc is such a maneuver. This generates questions rather than answers to questions with which the citizens are preoccupied. Here are only some of the topical questions:
- Who was right in the polemic of Vladimir Voronin with Igor Dodon? Probably, it is right to say that they were both equally right and this is equitable;
- Who of the two served Plahotniuc more assiduously? In this case, we can also presume that they both did it alike;
- What is the impact of the betrayal of the leaders of the PSRM? Is this impact positive or rather negative for the Republic of Moldova?, etc.
The given questions are not minor. Honest answers would reveal the prospects of the Republic of Moldova in case of the electoral victory of the supporters of the assimilators of Vlad Plahotniuc’s inheritance. For such questions not to bother public option, the Communist-Socialist bloc resorted to smokescreens and to the reanimation of older scarecrows concerning the: a) danger of loss of statehood; b) union with Romania; c) rapprochement with NATO; d) undermining of the position and values of the Orthodox Church, etc. We already got used to the fact that these scarecrows are reanimated and recycled again ad against, as earlier. The PSRM’s electoral program of 2014 is a pertinent example. But every coin has two sides. So, the invoked smokescreens generate questions that are inconvenient for the Communist-Socialist bloc, given that:
- The leader of the PSRM Igor Dodon was the one who subject Nicolae Timofti to the statehood test, ensuring his election as President of the Republic of Moldova after betraying the PCRM and enabling the Alliance for European Integration to rule for another five years. The conclusion is that the tester was weak and without capacities, while society no longer need such staff;
- According to the promises made for being elected President, the leader of the PSRM was to ban unionism during the first 100 days of the presidential mandate. This way, in March 2017, we should have had no unionist parties and high-ranking officials with Romanian nationality. In fact, despite the programmatic provisions, the PSRM and its leader promoted to the post of Prime Minister only persons who have Romanian nationality. The only attempt to promote a person without Romanian nationality ended with a contraband scandal. This is a distressing experience of fighting Romanianism and unionism!;
- Another leader of the PSRM, Zinaida Grechanyi, signed the most important document on cooperation with NATO – Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) Republic of Moldova – NATO, which specifies the main political and reformation objectives of the Republic of Moldova by extending cooperation with the European and Euro-Atlantic bodies and institutions. Any comment is useless here;
- The protection of the Christian-Orthodox values is a banal propagandistic trick that became known when the leader of the PSRM refused to take attitude to the transformation of Hagia Sophia Church in Istanbul into a mosque. This way, he forgot the public commitment to become the protector of Orthodoxy and did it for fear of not bothering somehow the strategic partner – Recep Erdoğan. For the sake of the latter’s support, he accepted to sacrifice the Turkish teachers who were expelled with comfort to jails in Turkey, which appears to be in a rather Christian way.
From the aforementioned, we can convince ourselves that the most dangerous problems faced by the leader of the PSRM in the Republic of Moldova were generated by himself, by the party he leads and by the Communist allies of this. The leader of the PSRM knows very well this type of strategic approaches – creation of problems for having the occasion to propose solving them.
Conclusions
The political parties that are interested in assimilating Vlad Plahotniucs’ inheritance found sufficient reasons to combine forces for the upcoming snap parliamentary elections. By all appearances, the leaders of these have what to lose if they remain outside government. On the other hand, the pro-European parties remained divided and at odds before the Communist-Socialist bloc, confirming that declaring the intention to fight corruption and putting this into practice are different things. Anyway, there is yet hope.
The scarecrows and smokescreens launched by the PSRM are aimed at diverting public opinion away from a series of very pressing problems related to the freeing of state institutions from the fugitive oligarchs’ control. As regards the real, not imaginary threats to state security, they persist in a large number in the Eurasian area – the CIS and the Eurasian Economic Union – into which the Communist-Socialist bloc wants to integrate the Republic of Moldova. Let’s exemplify:
- The President of Belarus Alexandr Lukashenko permanently invokes the pressure exerted by Russia on his country, which endangers the independence and sovereignty of Belarus. This danger became even more acute after the presidential elections of August 2020 were rigged and the dependence of Belarus on Russia was increased.
- The annexation of territories, support for separatist movements, all kinds of wars, armed clashes and threats to the territorial integrity took place between the CIS states: Russia – Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas; Armenia – Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh; Kyrgyzstan – Tajikistan on the border between the two countries; Russia – Kazakhstan concerning the affiliation of the territories in northern Kazakhstan that was perceived through the angle of the presents of the Russian people. It goes to real conflicts with possible dramatic consequences for the people of the countries from the Eurasian area and not to imaginary ones that were invented by the Communist-Socialist bloc for its election campaign.