Ion Tăbârță, expert at the IDIS Viitorul think-tank, says he sees three coalition scenarios take shape. They include a PDM-PSRM coalition or a majority assembled by the PDM with the help of the Shor Party, the three independent MPs and a number of potential turncoats. The third scenario would be snap elections, but in Tăbârță’s opinion it is the least likely because of the financial costs it involves.
Speaking during an economic talk-show, Ion Tăbârță said that while the exact composition of the future government is not clear yet, it will certainly include the Democratic Party. The expert suggests the Democrats’ invitations to the electoral bloc NOW have not been genuine and are only meant to make the bloc appear intransigent in the foreign partners’ eyes. So PDM and PSRM are likely to find common ground in the name of political and economic stability, and continuity of the ongoing government projects.
The coalition formation process has received a foreign “short circuit” in the meantime, after the separate visits paid to Moscow by president Igor Dodon and later, as PSRM proposed a coalition to NOW, by the party’s formal chairperson Zinaida Greceanîi. Tăbârță thinks the Kremlin disapproved of a PSRM-PDM alliance and would rather want the Socialists to push for snap elections. The reports shaming Vlad Plahotniuc released on Russian television are proof to that. Or perhaps, guesses Tăbârță, the Kremlin is comfortable in principle with such a coalition, but just doesn’t like the current terms.
At the same time, Brussels has made it clear that an alliance with the Socialists will not help to unfreeze the assistance for Moldova. Moreover, the Moldovan Democrats have a special relationship with Romania’s Social Democrats and a PDM-PSRM alliance could strain that relationship, said Tăbârță.