The Institute of Public Policy and Romania’s Center for Conflict Prevention and Early Warning presented the conclusions of a project of public debates that centered on Moldova’s security. The goal of the debates was to obtain the reaction of civil society, academic community and experts to security-related problems. The results of this project were made public in a news conference at IPN.
The six debates staged within the project involved over 100 specialists and experts who represented the academic community, civil society and the private sector. “We ascertained that some of the subjects weren’t sufficiently clear and understood, while the recommendations on other subjects were formulated rather well. “The debates focused on several major subjects, including the security environment, Moldova’s foreign policy orientation, the relationship with the EU and NATO, the relationship with Ukraine, Russia and the CIS, societal security, corruption, new threats, military security and strategic profile and Moldova’s ambition level,” said Iurie Pantea, program director at the Institute of Public Policy.
The National Security Strategy is worked out by state institutions, is assumed by the President, enters the Supreme Security Council and then reaches Parliament. “We saw that there was a major deficiency of coherence at the level of legal documents on security. We ascertained that at executive level, there is no instrument for coordinating the policies and institutions involved in ensuring national security. We suggested making a Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the security sector so that this joined and coordinate all the competent institutions,” said Iulian Chifu, director of the Center for Conflict Prevention and Early Warning.
The experts noted the lack of preoccupation with security among the people and decision makers, the existence of taboo subjects, the bad image of the military in society and the excessive classifying of plans and documents. The participants in the debates said the critical spirit, as an instrument for filtering out propaganda and combating the information war, must be developed in schools at all the levels.
“I think the debates were very useful as we synthetized things that express partially the concerns of the representatives of the security system. It is important to identify the problems that must be taken into account when documents are adopted. The strategy should bring about very great changes,” said former minister of defense Viorel Cibotaru.
“The debate participants addressed the lack of societal cohesion as the most serious threat to national security, which leads to a lot of problems. Among the factors that determine the absence of cohesion are the mistaken perception of particular security subjects and the lack of a common message of the decision makers. This leads to discrepancy between the promoted national interest and people’s perceptions,” said Elena Mirzac, director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Chisinau.
The experts said that corruption is the biggest security-related problem in Moldova. Thus, the security strategy should treat it as such and all the state institutions should focus on the fight against corruption.
