When social cohesion is absent and in parts society is even fissured, a political consensus on any problem is impossible. A narrow consensus in the Republic of Moldova could be gathered by the theft of the US$ 1 million and the making of the repayment of the stolen funds the people’s burden and also other aspects such as the European integration or the Eurasian integration. But a consensus on the mixed-member electoral system or the proportional representation system will never be achieved, vice director of the Institute of Legal and Political Research of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova Victor Juc said in the public debate “Broad consensus in Moldovan society: necessity and possibility”, which was the 74th installment of a series, organized by IPN News Agency and Radio Moldova.
Victor Juc noted that the problem of a broad or narrow consensus has never been on the agenda of the day in Moldova, while decisions were taken rather based on representative democracy mechanisms in Parliament. The Constitution of the Republic of Moldova and other laws and regulations were adopted this way. There were attempts to hold consultative referendums on one initiative or another, especially those concerning the distribution of the powers between the supreme authorities, but these had no effect because they didn’t gather together the necessary number of participants.
“In the case of a totalitarian regime, a consensus is based on pressure on the part of the authorities that have specialized bodies in the field. In a democratic regime, it is harder to achieve a consensus given that the pluralism of opinion exists and is promoted. This does not mean that consensus cannot exist under a democratic regime. But the most important thing resides in the plenary assumption of democratic values given that these exist as a state and as a process,” stated Victor Juc.
According to him, during three months since the debates on the electoral system change were launched, the consensus was simply destroyed as a phenomenon and the people stopped to realize the advantages and disadvantages of one of the three main types of electoral systems.
“I think that after this campaign the people will say that they want no system at all as nothing can be implemented in the Republic of Moldova, given that the shortcomings are placed above everything and shortcomings exist indeed because this is how society is,” said Victor Juc.
He underlined that the provision of financial assistance to the Republic of Moldova by the European Union turned from an economic into a political issue and became a pressing problem because Moldova was earlier treated as a community state. “I think that logic ultimately prevailed when the decision to provide financial assistance to the Republic of Moldova was taken. The logic was that assistance should be better offered to the current government for covering budget costs and implementing other projects rather than to allow other things to happen, which would be detrimental to Moldova’s European course,” added Victor Juc.
The public debate “Broad consensus in Moldovan society: necessity and possibility” is the 74th installment of the series of debates “Developing political culture by public debates” that are organized with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
