Sincerity and tricks in compromises between government and opposition

Some politicians claim that the Communists’ Party always cooperated with the opposition during its 8 years in government, unlike the Alliance for European Integration that used tricks to stay in power and doesn’t listen to the opposition. Others claim that the Communists’ cooperation with the opposition was staged and served only their interests. The opinions were voiced during the debate “The weapon, the art and the burden of political compromise”, organized by Info-Prim Neo news agency. PCRM lawmaker Artur Resetnicov said that after the parliamentary elections in 2001, PCRM obtained a constitutional majority and could have governed the country without dialogue or compromises with other political forces. “We even created a bloc of leftist parties. Mr. Dumitru Diacov (currently the head of the Democrats’ group in the Parliament, IPN.) was named leader of this bloc. In 2005, after PCRM obtained majority again, a consensus with that harsh opposition was found. By compromise, discussions and dialogue, we adopted two declarations of general consensus: one regarding integration into the EU and another one regarding the reunification of the country”, said Resetnicov. According to the PCRM MP, the political compromise was obtained by offering control tools to the opposition. “The opposition had most of the members of the Central Electoral Commission, of the Broadcast Coordinating Council, of the Court of Accounts. In 2009, we won the majority of votes and immediately announced our willingness to have a dialogue regarding the election of the president, but didn’t succeed in finding a compromise. We had the chance to amend the Constitution, but we didn’t use any tricks or referenda. These are positive examples of compromise”, said Artur Resetnicov. In reply, the leader of the Democrats’ parliamentary group Dumitru Diacov declared that these examples were a kind of compromise edging on art and that everything was well staged. “I constantly tried to discuss with Voronin, to form a normal leftist party and what happened in 2003 with the so-called cooperation of leftist parties was a trick. I was told overnight I was the leader of that electoral bloc. When I asked how we should behave during the upcoming elections, I was told to do as we could. It was done in Moldovan style, but it should have been a serious thing”, said the PDM group leader. Dumitru Diacov says that Moldova needs peaceful parties to bring order in the country, to build a civilized, democratic state, which would provide calm and stability. “Compromise is absolutely necessary. Without it we won’t be able to govern. We’re making titanic efforts to maintain the compromise in the governing alliance. We have problems, but we learned that only through compromise we’d be able to send a constructive message to society”, said Diacov. The public debate “The weapon, the art and the burden of political compromise” is the seventh in the series of similar events organized as part of the project “Developing political culture in public debates”, supported by the German Foundation Hanns Seidel.