The electoral campaign for the presidential elections in Romania, in which many Moldovans with Romanian citizenship will participate, started at the end of last week. A week before this date, the first significant political movements aimed at the parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova were also felt in Chisinau, even though they are due to take place only in about half a year’s time. These movements refer to the attempts of the unionist current in Moldova to overcome the state of dispersion that characterized it in previous electoral cycles and to consolidate its efforts on a single civic and political platform, including a single electoral list, with which to finally reach the Parliament in Chisinau. The guests of the public debate “What’s happening in the unionist political segment?”, organized by IPN News Agency, discussed to what extent the announced initiatives can ensure a better electoral score for the unionist current, respectively, a seat in the future Parliament and how it can support the European orientation of the Republic of Moldova in a future parliamentary coalition.
Igor Botan, the permanent expert of the project, stated that ideologies are synthesizing elaborations, based on doctrines, aimed at responding to the epochal challenges of the time in the social-economic and political life of societies. Thus, ideologies represent the transition from theory to practice, since doctrines are fundamental philosophical elaborations of social-economic and political processes. “They are necessary for party founders to explain what kind of parties they want to found and on the basis of whose values. Ideologies are important for party officials, who draft programmatic documents, train party cadres and select implementers,” the expert explains.
According to him, the main ideologies are liberalism, conservatism, socialism and its variations – communism, social democracy, etc. Unionism is a political current that emerged in the Republic of Moldova after the National Revival Movement (MRN) achieved a number of goals – Latin alphabet, sovereignty, independence. The NRM emerged in 1988 after the 19th Conference of the Communist Party of the USSR adopted a resolution on the democratization of Soviet society, which in fact allowed political pluralism, despite Article 6 of the USSR Constitution, which refers to the leading and guiding force of the CPSU in Soviet society.
“Unionism as a political current, a continuation of the MRN, appeared with the insertion in the statutory documents of political parties of the objective of reuniting the Republic of Moldova with Romania. The National Liberal Party, which was the first political party to include in its statutory documents the rapprochement with Romania “through the freedom of the reunited Romanian nation – towards well-being”, serves as a landmark in this respect,” Igor Botan said.
Currently, eight parties explicitly promote unionism in their statutory documents. They are PNL, Liberal Party, AUR, Republic of Union, Party of National Unity, Party of National Unity, Liberal Democratic Party, National Moldovan Party, Party of National Reintegration “Acasa”.
Anatol Taranu, PhD in history, said that the unionist movement in the Republic of Moldova is going through an extensive period. This is related to the fact that several political entities are emerging, which embrace the idea of union, including at the level of political program. In his opinion, this period has been extended too much and, in all likelihood, it is entering the intensive period, i.e. when it is about unification of unionist efforts, which could even lead to an electoral result
“Unionism in the Republic of Moldova actually appeared legally together with Gorbachev’s Perestroika, but it began to manifest itself already during the period of Independence. Frontul Popular, the political movement that actually contributed to the realization of Independence, included in its ranks a large number of people with unionist views, and this refers primarily to that part of the People’s Front represented by the intelligentsia”, noted Anatol Taranu, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
In his opinion, the intelligentsia is the fertile environment where unionism catches on best. This can be explained by the fact that unionism is based on a well-established national consciousness, and national consciousness also requires knowledge in order to be able to overcome the harmful legacy of the Soviet and Tsarist periods. Now, at that time, east of the Prut, there were actions to rebuild identity, which led to a certain state of affairs among the majority population.
Anatol Taranu said that unionism is not a political ideology, but a political movement. And within this political movement there are people who share different ideological values, it is a national ideal that these people are guided by and that goes beyond the limits of political ideologies and this is a distinctive feature of the unionist movement. “Unionism, in the Republic of Moldova in particular, comes to remove, to overcome certain gaps in the history that we are living because of these circumstances in which the Romanian space has ended up by virtue of the historical, political, geopolitical, etc., historical conjuncture,” said the PhD in history.
The director of the sociological company Date Inteligente, Mihai Bologan, said that on the unionist segment, there are two parties that have actually promoted unionism and have come to government – the Christian Democratic People’s Party and the Liberal Party. The latter, 16 years ago, managed to record the highest electoral score of a declared unionist party in the Republic of Moldova. Thus, 16 years ago, the highest national score was reached for any political party declared unionist.
Mihai Bologan mentioned that, perhaps, the way these parties managed the government and how they promoted unionist ideas being in a coalition government “or rather how they did not promote them”, influenced quite a lot what happened later. “From a sociological point of view we have, on the one hand, a large number of citizens who would vote for union. I am talking about a segment of 30-35%, depending on when the polls are taken. We still have an impressive number of people who would vote for union. They don’t end up in the majority, for various reasons, but we basically don’t have parties representing them,” explains iData’s director.
According to him, today, unionists vote for the ruling PAS party, which is not unionist and does not promote unionist messages. “So a balance has been reached where people who would generally support union with Romania have found a party, which is rather pro-European. These voters hope that by moving closer to Romania within the European Union, this union will take place in one form or another.”
As for the legality of unionism, Mihai Bologan says that “the Republic of Moldova is a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. Respectively, there are many legal bases for this territory to reunite with Romania, following the model of Germany, Italy, etc. I believe that there is also legitimacy, because there is Romania Mare, a recognized state, and Bessarabia was separated from this state”, added the iData director.
The public debate on “What is happening on the unionist political segment?” is organized within the cycle of debates “Developing political culture in public debates”. IPN Agency is organizing the cycle with the support of the German Hanns Seidel Foundation.
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