The parliamentary elections will dominate the public agenda in 2018 and will influence the behavior of the elites regardless of their geopolitical orientation, political pundit Dionis Cenusa writes in an op-ed for IPN where his lists his predictions for 2018.

Dionis Cenusa writes that all polls this year suggest the Socialists will win next year’s elections, but won’t be able to govern alone.

This means that pro-European forces together might get enough seats to govern. In order to have a strong position during the post-electoral negotiations, the Democrats target 15-20 seats and the mixed voting system will help them achieve this goal.

Together with the PAS-PPDA bloc, the Democrats can get 35-45% of votes. However, both Maia Sandu and Andrei Nastase rejected the possibility of a coalition with PDM, writes Cenusa.

He thinks that the EU and the US interest in pushing for a pro-European coalition is low, but a Socialist victory might change this. The Democrats especially can count on US support. A key condition might be separating PDM from Vladimir Plahotniuc, but the latter cannot accept this because he needs the guarantee of immunity.

Cenusa adds that such a scenario is also unacceptable for PAS-PPDA, who owe their electoral basis to the anti-corruption/oligarchy/Plahotniuc rhetoric.

According to him, the fate of the post-electoral coalition will be decided by the number of parties that will enter the Parliament, especially if other pro-Russian groups such as the Communists or Our Party join the Socialists.

A coalition between PSRM and PDM is even less likely, but not wholly impossible - if PSRM breaks some commitments to Russia and PDM feels threatened by early elections, concludes Cenusa.