Poverty generates significant risks to political stability in the Republic of Moldova, to its pro-European course as it is exploited skillfully by the forces that want to destabilize the situation in the Republic of Moldova, Dan Perciun, chairman of the Parliament’s commission on social protection, health and family, stated in a public debate hosted by IPN News Agency.
According to the PAS MP, the growth of poverty generates different political risks, including social uprisings, by involving the young population in these social movements. “Beyond this, poverty leads to an increase in the number of populist, radical parties of the right or the left, to a simplification of political slogans, to population’s openness to evidently unrealistic promises, to lower political culture and fewer political debates, to the radicalization of political speech and creates major risks to political stability in a country,” noted Dan Perciun.
The MP of the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity said that in Moldova’s context, the growth of poverty poses also risks to the country’s European integration as the social challenges experienced by Moldova are exploited by particular political forces in a very cynical way. “In a bid to protect the own interests, for fear of not being jailed, particular political players, using money from abroad, from Russia, try to destabilize the politic situation in the Republic of Moldova, to thwart our European course and to find particular support among the very poor population, for which the horizon of tomorrow is very short, and they choose, in a rather reasonable way, from the perspective of this category of people, 400 lei today versus the medium-term development perspective of the Republic of Moldova,” stated the MP.
“Poverty fighting has been our priority since the very first day of government. To realize exactly what measures are needed, we need the profile of the poor people in the Republic of Moldova. There are two large categories that are very vulnerable – pensioners and families with many children. Our approach from the start was aimed at these two categories. If we speak about pensioners, the minimum pension was raised in October 2021, and this was a dramatic move that cost about 2 billion lei a year. It led to an increase of up to 68% in the incomes of almost 200,000 pensioners, in addition to the allowances for disability pensions and other payments that are correlated with the minimum pension. This remains the basic instrument for supporting the pensioners with very low pensions. The minimum pension in 2021 was 1,188 lei, while in 2023 it exceeded 2,600 lei,” stated the MP.
Dan Perciun noted that the social assistance for families with many children was increased considerably and an additional allowance of 1,000 lei a month for all the families with children younger than two was introduced in October 2022. ”We must bear in mind that a balance is needed between the social protection measures and investments as our wellbeing tomorrow depends directly on the resources we invest in the economy,” he said.
The public debate entitled “Poverty in Moldova: social, political and geopolitical dangers?” was the 282nd installment of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
