Renato Usatii has been elected president of the party he founded, called “Partidul lui Renato Usatii” (The Party of Renato Usatii) and abbreviated as PaRUs/ПаРУс, a pun on the Russian word парус, meaning sail.
At the party's founding assembly on Saturday, Usatii declared that the current government was pushing the country to “the verge of a catastrophe”, promising to “punish everyone” once victorious in elections.
He went on to declare that it was the Moldovan people who should decide the country's foreign policy orientation, calling for a referendum.
The party's assembly elected Elena Gritco and Nina Cereteu as vice presidents. Formerly employees at the Ministry of Justice, the women gained a brief spotlight in June when they accused the Ministry of pursuing political interests when refusing to register the re-naming of the People's Republican Party, which Renato Usatii had taken over from Nicolae Andronic, into Our Party. The Ministry said later in a statement that the refusal was in connection with a procedural flaw.
PaRUs is yet to be formally registered. A recent poll, commissioned by the paper Panorama, showed that in the November elections a party led by Renato Usatii would clear, albeit by a very small margin, the 6% threshold needed to enter the Parliament.
