Together with the Constitutional Court’s judgment of February 23, the political situation in the Republic of Moldova worsened further and the identification of solutions continues to depend on the two political entities that continue not to communicate or at least haven’t announced their intention to initiate an official dialog. The reasons and relevant solutions were discussed by experts invited to IPN’s public debate “PSRM and PAS, two parliamentary groups on which overcoming of political crisis depends. Why is communication between them blocked?”.
Igor Boțan, the standing expert of IPN’s project, said “political communication” contains two notions: “communication” and “politics”. Politics is the art of governing a state, while communication means the mechanism by which the state institutions receive impetuses for acting one way or another. “When it goes to political communication, one should understand that this has several levels. At the first level, communication takes place between state institutions and the citizens, while at the second level between institutions. The communication between institutions is now defective,” he stated.
According to the expert, the citizens should realize that the art of governing is realized by communication, by messages, by invoking the obligations of those who represent them. This type of commutation differs from inter-human communication by the existence of state institutions that have powers and have coercive force.
Igor Boțan confirms that the overcoming of the political crisis depends on the PAS and PSRM as together the parliamentary groups of the two parties have an absolute majority and can decide to dissolve Parliament or not to dissolve it. “The fact that together they have over 51 seats of MP makes them the chief negotiators, especially because the PSRM also has a relative majority and is the main force in any combination. The two parties cannot come to terms because one of the groups changed its attitude. The PSRM in 2019 was for snap elections, but it suddenly changed its position at the start of February, when the PSRM decided that Parliament should work and should invest a transitional Government. But the PAS does not agree with this,” stated Igor Boțan.
Zinaida Gribincea, expert in psychology, journalism and communication, noted the parties that entered Parliament and that went through the election campaign stage should focus on communication and a formalized communication format is needed. The political communication is prefigured and is well shaped in the election campaign and later in institutional communication. “All the leaders who entered Parliament and the leaders of parties should realize that they already finished the election campaign and it is no longer communication in terms of trivial approaches to particular subjects, but it is institutional communication. This means assuming responsibility for what’s happening on the political arena,” she said.
Zinaida Gribincea said that judging by the model of communication, we should now speak about negotiations, not dialogue. The negotiations can solve a part of the problems, but not all of them because a lot depends not only on intentions, strategies applied at talks, but also on the will of participants, negotiators. “In the presidential election campaign, there was no efficient communication. Communicational distortions were witnessed and personal labeling was used. There weren’t particular traditions as regards communication between the eventual development partners. There was no efficient communication before the election campaign and later and there is no minimum basis needed for correct negotiation. It is absent because particular limits were crossed and negotiating should be learned from zero,” she stated.
Civic activist with experience in communication Ana Racu, UN expert and a member of the United Nations Committee against Torture, said the capacity to take decisions and answer for these decisions and to assume responsibility for done or said things are a general indicator of maturity, either political, business, pedagogical or family one. “As we can see from the press, there is no dialogue between the two parties (PSRM and PAS, e.n.) or at least communication that could be considered dialogue or negotiations. This is due to various reasons, including because there is no confidence between these parties. An attempt was made to negotiate through neutral negotiators (foreign ones, e.n.) in 2019,” she stated.
Anei Racu said alternative solutions should be identified and the reconciliation of the sides can be such a solution. “I don’t know if political mediation between these two parties is possible, but attempts should be made at least because the situation is now specific and there is a common enemy called COVID-19. Usually, a big enemy can make the most antagonistic forces unite, but I don’t know if these parties consider this virus a common enemy,” she stated.
The public debate “PSRM and PAS, two parliamentary groups on which overcoming of political crisis depends. Why is communication between them blocked?” is the 173th installment of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is implemented with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
