Political clientelism or the use of public resources for recompensing political support and for obtaining particular advantages is a widespread phenomenon in Moldova. Regardless of the ruling party or alliance, the mayors affiliated to these have bigger chances of receiving budgetary funds than those from the opposition and the independent ones. This way the ruling parties try to keep their voters, stated expert of the Independent Think Tank “Expert-Grup” Ion Meleșteanu, who is the author of a study of political clientelism in Moldova. The study was presented in a public debate staged by Expert Forum, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Rule of Law Program South East Europe, IPN reports.
“In the case of the state budget, in the period of democratic governance, starting with the European integration alliance of 2009, mainly in 2012 and 2014, we witnessed bigger negligence of the mayors representing the opposition compared with 2009, which was the last year of the Communist rule. On the one hand, this can be explained by the fact that the democratic alliance started to compensate the mayor’s offices that were neglected in the previous period or this can be intentional negligence of the opposition so as to make it change the political color,” stated Ion Meleșteanu.
During the years marked by the political migration of local elected officials, the financing chance was almost equal for all the mayors, with differences of at most ten percentage points. The parliamentary election years 2009, 2010 (early elections) and 2014 are characterized by larger transfers from the state budget to the local public authorities. In 2015, the annex to the state budget law on allocations for capital investment was replaced with the element of special purpose transfer for special purposes.
The expert recommends distributing the allocations from the state budget for different projects according to the public interest, not the interests of the ruling parties. There should be set down clear criteria for distributing the funds, which would not allow the legislature to subjectively modify the list of projects compiled by the Ministry of Finance in the case of planning of special purpose funds for capital investment. It is also recommended carrying out a real assessment of the needs of each local authority, regardless of the political color, which would include, besides the expenditure estimate, a cost-benefit analysis.
“Expert Grup” worked out a map of political clientelism in Moldova, which is available on the Center’s website. The map enables to monitor political clientelism in time depending on the types of funds, political parties and localities.
Florian Seitz, standing representative in Moldova of the Embassy of Germany in Chisinau, said each citizen pays the costs of political clientelism. It is a phenomenon with social effects at all the levels. That’s why society should know this.
Hartmut Rank, director of the Rule of Law Program South East Europe of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, noted the identification of clientelism will strengthen democracy in the country. The public budget funds should be allocated to communities that really need them.
