“But the most embarrassing thing for society comes from an entirely different direction. Ex-President Igor Dodon informed public opinion that, as a football fan, he asked for permission from Vadim Krasnoselskii, who is homologated as the president of Transnistria, to be present on the stadium in Tiraspol at the matches of Sheriff. This happened after in 2016 he promised to reunify the country and to ensure the observance of the human freedoms, including free movement…”
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Globalization or glocalization?

If the Moldovan authorities started to politicize the law enforcement and regulatory agencies, the opposition can start to politicize sports. The leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), Igor Dodon, congratulated the footballers from Sheriff Tiraspol on the occasion of the excellent debut in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League: I wish the players from Sheriff new victories in this period that is historical for the Moldovan football!

Undoubtedly, sport is the ambassador of peace and of proper understanding between people. That’s why it is embarrassing when politicians try to acclaim athletes and their performances, especially if the given politicians didn’t contribute somehow to the performances of these. It is anecdotal, but the 15 footballers who played the match against Shakhtar Donetsk for beating it didn’t include any citizen of the Republic of Moldova: three players were Brazilians, two – Greeks, two – Columbians, one – Peruvian, one – Luxemburgian, 1 – Bosnian, one – Macedonian, one – Ghanaian, one – Malian, one – Guinean, one –Uzbek. The team’s coach is a citizen of Ukraine. These athletes and their coach had an excellent performance and they form part of a business project. Very soon, we will see that the best players and their coach will be sold for a lot of money to foreign clubs that are much richer than Sheriff. This is the reason why it is somehow embarrassing to hear that the historical period of the Moldovan football has started.

Excited by the victory scored by Sheriff, the football fans of the team can wonder – what’s bothersome if the match against Shakhtar didn’t involve any Moldovan  footballer? Indeed, the play not the nationality of players matters. In fact, nothing is bothersome, except for the congratulations of the Socialist leader. The truth is the whole lineup of Sheriff clearly shows that the globalist processes invaded the Republic of Moldova. In this connection, we remember that the leader of PSRM asserted himself by triggering a struggle against this phenomenon, counterpoising glocalization and globalizing. 

The injudicious gesture of the Socialist leader is not simply trivial. In the current conditions, when the government of the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) do whatever they want, at least particular benchmarks for the stabilization and solidarity of the parliamentary opposition represented by PSRM and the Party of Communists (PSRM) need to be kept. It wasn’t meant to be. After what Igor Dodon asserted, the estrangement between PCRM and PSRM seems imminent. The point is the leader of PCRM Vladimir Voronin in the recent campaign prior to the parliamentary elections clearly pleaded against foreigners: “This is what you want, dear electors, when you vote the Parliament? Do you want them to vote for the removal of the country’s status of neutrality? And for NATO soldiers to come here and you to have not only white, but also dark-skin children? Do you want this? And the Romanian gendarmerie to come after them?”

Of the aforementioned, we can easily see that Communist Voronin is an authentic glocalist, while Socialist Dodon is a disguised supporter of globalism. But the two currents are antagonistic. The dangers to the unity of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists (BCS) do not end here yet. Voronin’s fear of people with dark skin and the Romanian gendarmerie risks reaching delirious proportions after Dodon congratulated actually the legionaries (see legionnairs) of Tiraspol.

Political plagiarism and its effects

The PSRM leader’s congratulations for the legionaries from Tiraspol imply serious risks not only to the unity of the opposition, but also to the society’s spiritual ties. The idea of uniting society through the agency of spiritual ties was announced in 2014, together with the launch by the leader of PSRM of the campaign: Moldova, Moldovans, Moldovan. Without any illusion, his campaign was nothing else but the adjustment of the 2012 initiative of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, concerning the spiritual ties as protection from the Western influence.

It is not hard to prove that in his political activity, the leader of PSRM pursues narrowly Vladimir Putin and his party “United Russia”. It’s clear why he does this – the whole society witnessed Putin’s open support for Dodon to the detriment of Voronin in the parliamentary elections of November 2014. That support enabled the leader of PSRM to improve his rating from 0.5% in March to 20% before the parliamentary elections. At the same time, Voronin’s rating decreased from ~40% to ~15%. This political somersault made Igor Dodon President in 2016. In gratitude, the leader of PSRM publicly said that he envies the Russian people for having Putin as President.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and Western bans were introduced, President Putin reacted by launching the policy to substitute imports (import substitution), which actually mean the intention to transform Russia into a kind of autarchy. To please Putin, at the economic forum in St. Petersburg, the leader of PSRM, from the post of President of the Republic of Moldova, offered to publicly condemn globalization, pleading categorically in favor of glocalization, which matches perfectly the policy to substitute imports. Finally, to remove any doubt that he pursuits Putin’s policy, at the PSRM’s congress of December 2020 Igor Dodon imposed the renouncing of the Socialist ideology in favor of the conservative one that is embraced by Putin and United Russia.

It became yet clear later that the blind following of the Putinist trajectory implies major risks: for PSRM; for the unity of the opposition; and for society in general. This way, guided by the conservative ideology, PSRM lamentably lost the recent parliamentary elections, of July 11, 2021, after losing the presidential elections of November 2020. In such circumstances, so as to put things right, the leader of PSRM decided to convene an extraordinary congress of the party in December 2021. Also, Dodon suggested that an eventual merger of the Socialists and the Communists can be a solution to the crisis faced by PSRM. But the answer given by the leader of PCRM to such a suggestion wasn’t encouraging: We are a classical party. We have our Marxist-Leninist ideology. You do not have an ideology. We know who the Socialists are. Definitely, the copying of the Putinist policies cannot be perceived as an ideology convergent with the Marxist-Leninist one, especially after the leader of PSRM repeatedly showed to be a renegade, turning from Communist to Socialist and ultimately to Conservative.  

Corrosion of spiritual ties

Concrete examples are needed for those who do not think that Putinist policy and its copying by PSRM lead to an impasse. A very eloquent example is the fact that out of patriotic urges and in order to strengthen the spiritual ties, Vladimir Putin himself started a campaign to support the policy to substitute imports, in an absolutely glocalistic style, promoting authentic Russian products. Evidently, the most emblematic Russian product is the car Lada Kalina. Despite the intrusive promotion of this authentic Russian product, when the authorities decided to honor the Russian Olympic medalists at the recent Tokyo Olympics, the latter were awarded German cars BMW X5. The Russian authorities probably presumed that the awarding of Lada Kalina cars to the Olympic medalists can be interpreted as a bad joke or even as offense. The conclusion is that the invoked example reveals most conclusively the success of the policy to substitute imports and clearly show that the spiritual ties entered the corrosion phase.

In the same sporting context, it can be said that the success of Sheriff Tiraspol does not really matches the spiritual ties of the campaign “Moldova, Moldovans, Moldovan!” Moreover, the xenophobe statements of one of the BCS leaders showed how dangerous the given spiritual ties that entered the corrosion phase can be. But the most embarrassing thing for society comes from an entirely different direction. Ex-President Igor Dodon informed public opinion that, as a football fan, he asked for permission from Vadim Krasnoselskii, who is homologated as the president of Transnistria, to be present on the stadium in Tiraspol at the matches of Sheriff. This happened after in 2016 he promised to reunify the country and to ensure the observance of the human freedoms, including free movement.