All the electoral contenders competing in the presidential elections of November 1 say that they want to be elected President. Besides the made promises, the candidates resort to all kinds of practices so as to appear more convincing before the voters and these put the stamp “Voted” against their names on the ballot. IPN News Agency contacted a number of experts and asked them to analyze the behavior of the eight aspirants for the office of President, in the order in which they were registered, and the actions to which they resort to build a favorable image: No. 5 Violeta Ivanov, the Shor Party’s candidate.
Political commentator Ion Tăbârță said Violeta Ivanov could have had a campaign with an impact if those events behind the scenes hadn’t taken place, namely the secret negotiations held by the Shor Party and the Pro Moldova Party with Igor Dodon. In fact, the two parties are the political projects of Mister Plahotniuc and we should say it openly. The role of Violeta Ivanov is to attract the voters of the left whom Igor Dodon will not manage to embrace and not to allow these voters to go to Renato Usatyi. She either acts as an extra or plays Igor Dodon’s games.
Violeta Ivanov is a nice presence, a woman who built a career, but everything is related to image and form rather than to content. The result, if this is achieved, will be due to the leader of the Shor Party Ilan Shor and to that fanaticism about Ilan Shor of a part of the voters in the Republic of Moldova. It will rather be an automatic vote given out of inertia for Ilan Shor, not for Violeta Ivanov.
If a more insistent and harsh campaign had been conducted, in contraposition to Igor Dodon, the results would have been different probably. But this campaign is designed rather not to thwart Igor Dodon’s plans and the candidate is rather complementary.
The Shor Party hopes to maintain its political project for the next parliamentary elections, either ordinary or snap. They want to keep their presence. Everyone understands that this is not a real campaign.
“WatchDog.MD” expert Valeriu Pașa said the names matter less in the case of the Shor Party’s candidate. Anyone could have been this party’s candidate. What the Shor Party and, implicitly, Ilan Shor try to do is to conserve the own voters who grew in number during the economic crisis and to show that the party is a player. They aim to gain over 5% of the ballot in the first round of voting, to show that it is a parliamentary party and that it can cross the election threshold in parliamentary elections. They hope to yet get more, about 8-9% of the vote, and this way to practically repeat the result of the parliamentary elections, to show that they didn’t disappear. This will offer much more legitimacy to the party.
Furthermore, this is the consolidation of a political platform that is probably not very important, but that can be used later by the Plahotniuc-Shor duo, if it passes the election threshold, to convey their people to Parliament. A number of MPs of Pro Moldova already stated their support for Violeta Ivanov. Evidently, if there are parliamentary elections, they will probably form an electoral bloc, will probably compete on the ticket of the Shor Party so that the closest persons of Shor and Plahotniuc enter Parliament. This scenario would offer Shor more political power and the relationship of power between Plahotniuc and Shor would change slightly.
The second goal is to make their voters more faithful through their local bodies, by compiling lists of voters who would vote for Violeta Ivanov and, actually, for Shor, and to redirect them to Igor Dodon in the runoffs. This is absolutely evident. So, Violeta Ivanov is practically an electoral agent of Igor Dodon in these elections.
Media expert Aneta Gonța said that Violeta Ivanov benefits from a constant and even pronounced media campaign in the media outlets affiliated to the party that she represents in the presidential elections. Her campaign activities are covered by at least three TV channels and several online publications in detail and only in a positive light, Violeta Ivanov being the candidate with the largest number of positive media appearances after Igor Dodon, but in much smaller proportions.
A part of the institutions that are analyzed in the period present Violeta Ivanov neutrally and seldom in unfavorable contexts. The candidate takes care to appear most often in positions that advantage her. The candidate and the party that fielded her broadly publish and disseminate the materials prepared by the campaign team of Violeta Ivanov as explicit electoral advertisements and, rather often, as hidden electoral adverting, the texts not being marked appropriately. These materials evidently present the Shor Party’s candidate in the most positive light, creating a very good image to her in the press.
Violeta Ivanov cumulates different elements of media communication in which important financial resources are invested so as to appear in the best light. She constantly avoids direct media confrontations with other candidates through electoral debates, preferring to evade the inconvenient questions about her campaign activities and about the Shor Party’s president. This way, she banks on the maintaining of a rather positive media image.
IPN
