Any form of restricting and defaming the protests limits the opposition’s communication impact inside and outside the country. As the social basis of the protests is narrow or is narrowing, the impossibility for these to be read as a signal of alarm by the European institutions and other foreign partners grows, political pundit Dionis Cenușa says in an analysis article for IPN Agency.
According to the expert, the small scale of protests risks leading to the stagnation of the credibility of the opposition as the rhetoric of this does not find sufficient reflection among the people. This can have a negative effect on the image of the European institutions that support the position of the opposition leaders (Maia Sandu and Andrei Năstase) and, respectively, react to the backsliding witnessed under the government of the PDM.
The European Parliament is the main institution against which the leaders of the PDM staged an offensive attack after this adopted a resolution on July 5, 2018 and demanded by this to stop any European assistance to Moldova for the non-fulfilment of the political preconditions.
In parallel with the discrediting of the protests and, respectively, the trivialization of the opposition’s approaches, the PDM continues to implement, in its own manner, the technical conditions for receiving the macro-financial assistance.
Dionis Cenușa anticipates that the enshrining of the European course in the Constitution, expectedly this autumn, will be the next step of the government that will distract domestic and foreign public attention and the attention of the European institutions from the essence of the antigovernment protests.
This will also reanimate the geopolitical confrontation ensured by President Igor Dodon, who will inevitably disseminate Euro-skeptical messages in the context of the World Congress of Families (September 14-16, 2018).
By such overlapping of events, the government will try to strengthen its image and to also generate a competition for public attention with a number of provoked artificial cases that would make the protesting opposition tired, concluded the politologist.
