The Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) on September 14, 2018 convened the National Political Council to debate the party’s strategy for the immediate period, the way in which the party will act as the main ruling party until the elections and to prepare the future ruling program that is to be implemented after the parliamentary elections of the start of the next year. The first thing that the PDM intends to do immediately is to modify the composition of the Cabinet following a detailed analysis of the situation. The second major objective is to clarify its positon on the political arena before the parliamentary elections. The position underscored by the PDM before the parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019 is yet of major interest. The leader of the PDM Vlad Plahotniuc left no shadow of a doubt that the party will form part of the future government, as a powerful man should do.
So, let’s analyze things to see how the PDM intends to position itself before the legislative elections. Listening to Vlad Plahotniuc, we reach the conclusion that starting from Moldovans’ expectations is the PDM’s priority. It is normal to be so, especially because it is known that the PDM invested massively in opinion polls. Consequently, geopolitics and, evidently, the geopolitical propagandists of the party, became the first victim of the PDM’s shift in position. According to the leader of the PDM, “...during 27 years of independence, the parties were created and developed based on geopolitical criteria and the people were implanted the idea that the country’s problems can be solved only if they were pro-European, pro-Russian, pro-American, unionist etc. No party positioned itself yet as pro-Moldova. There was created the false feeling that someone from outside the country takes care of Moldova’s future. All these positons actually show that the politicians distanced themselves from the people and their problems. They hid behind the geopolitical theme only owing to the incapacity to solve the people’s problems at internal level. The Moldovans face yet the same problems, no matter whether they are pro-European, pro-Russian, unionist or have no geopolitical option. But their problems are not solved by geopolitics, but by a good domestic policy designed amid Moldovans and for Moldovans”.
Consequently, the National Political Council of the PDM decided that as of September 14, 2018, the party will act as a pro-Moldova party that embraces all the Moldovans and whose agenda has the people’s problems as the main point! Now that this PDM’s change in position was clarified, we should ask what’s new in the statements of the party’s leader? NOTHING is an immediate response to this question! Indeed, in the eighth congress of the PDM of December 24, 2016, immediately after his election as president of the party, Vlad Plahotniuc gave a speech, saying, among others „...To win the parliamentary elections of 2018, we have to radically change and to adjust to the new realities and only this way we will succeed ... the exaggeration of the geopolitical positioning is not productive and is not at all for the benefit of society... In Moldova, we have different parties: pro-Russian, pro-Romanian, pro-European, and each of these focus on their own benefit in the election campaign ... Where are the Moldovans in all this story? Which is the party of the Moldovans? I think the Democratic Party should be this party, for sure...” Here we can convince ourselves that our national poet was indeed right when he said that all is old and all is new...
But let’s go on and determine the parties and political leaders that transmitted the most trenchant geopolitical messages? The author of the statement “Until 2019 Moldova will submit an application to join the European Union” would be an incontestable leader if corresponding rankings were compiled. This statement was made by the then leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova Marian Lupu on March 28, 2016 during the launch of the campaign “2019 – together in Europe”. Publika TV channel announced then: The campaign "2019 – together in Europe" will take place periodically during the next three years, in different localities of the country. But let’s go on. The second place would be taken by the statement Six Main Principles of the PDM, presented in the meeting of the National Political Council of the PDM of December 14, 2017: “The European integration is indeed the strategic development course of the country, not of one political party or another. This is a national value decided by the people’s vote. That’s why the actions of the PDM will be based on the European country development principles, while our initiative to enshrine the European integration desideratum in the CONSTITUTION of the Republic of Moldova is a confirmation of the fact that we address things as seriously as possible and confirm them by concrete deeds and actions. All these requirements come from the people...”. If someone didn’t know, the statements were made by the leader of the PDM Vlad Plahotniuc. The third place would be taken by the statement made on January 26, 2018: “When we return to a more intense dialogue, we will return to the calendar when we will submit the application to join the EU”. The author of this nice geopolitical statement is Iurie Leancă, Deputy Prime Minister for European integration and chairman of the European People’s Party of Moldova (PPEM).
Let’s move to the Eurasian segment now. The incontestable leader here is the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), which included in its political program the following clause: The PSRM will take energetic steps to have the Association Agreement with the EU scrapped and to hold a referendum on the country’s integration course. OUR ROAD IS ALONGSIDE RUSSIA, BELARUS AND KAZAKHSTAN! In our rankings, the PSRM ranks only fourth and not because it has a trenchant geopolitical preference. On the contrary, the Eurasian preference of the PSRM is very clear. The problem is that the informal leader of the PSRM Igor Dodon recently embraced, absolutely unexpectedly, the pro-European course, declaring on June 28, 2018 that: “Our goal is to modernize and develop the Republic of Moldova. Reforms will be done exclusively for the people’s benefit. We will design a strategic plan of reforms so that when the subject of Moldova’s entry into the European Union is raised, the country is ready from all viewpoints”.
If we look at the unionist segment, we will find here ten parties that declared themselves promoters of the union of the Republic of Moldova and Romania. However, none of them can compete with the Liberal Party (PL), whose leader Mihai Ghimpu has struggled for the national ideals for 30 years already. Pragmatism is what makes Mihai Ghimpu different from other unionist leaders. Thus, on March 13, 2018, Mihai Ghimpu said: “With all my love, figuratively, for Plahotniuc and PD, I’m ready to forgive all Plahotniuc’s sins if he supports the union statement”. This statement places Mister Mihai Ghimpu fifth on the rankings of Moldovan geopoliticians. Now Vlad Plahotniuc’s drama is that after his statement of September 14, 2018, he has no chance to be forgiven by Mihai Ghimpu. But it is probably better so. Who knows? Otherwise, given the statements made by the first deputy chairman of the PL Dorin Chirtoacă, a big confrontation could be witnessed: “If I see Plahotniuc approaching Mister Ghimpu, even if to apologize to him, I will tear away his legs. This should be clear. He crossed any possible red line in the relationship between people... What did he do in relation to Mister Ghimpu cannot be forgiven or overlooked even in relation to other people. But Mister Ghimpu is a close relative of mine, besides everything. Because Mister Ghimpu sincerely became involved in the struggle for the national liberation in 1070s, in 1980s, in 1990s, in 2007 and in 2009 too, making effort to resist all these years...”
Surely, all the other political parties have no chance to join somehow the geopolitical competition between the aforementioned parties. For example, it would be unserious for the leader of the Party “Platform Dignity and Truth” (PPDA) Andrei Năstase, with his napkin and cimbalom, to claim a leading place on the geopolitical rankings: “No one and nothing will change my national and European essence. We implement the Association Agreement because democracy and freedom of expression exists only there. When I spoke about the course, I meant the geopolitical course. Less rhetoric and more deeds. The implementation of the Association Agreement would have been completed if we had had another government." Definitely, this is not serious geopolitics.
What else can we say in conclusion? We ultimately saw this too – the leader of the PDM Vlad Plahotniuc, even if he informed us about his innovatory approaches, actually inspires himself by the very old theses of his party, dating from the time of Dumitru Diacov and Marian Lupu. Furthermore, he resorts to “loans” from the Moldovenist theses of the PSRM. But the most curious thing is when he announces that he throws the napkin on the cimbalom (expression meaning to come to terms, to give up fighting). The question is shouldn’t he have better thrown the napkin on the cimbalom when the relations between the Republic of Moldova and the European Union were excellent? It is evident that the Moldovenism announced by the leader of the PDM is resuscitated after the dramatic worsening of the relations with the EU. But this is how a political struggle is. We should now have pity for the propagandists of the PDM, who made such an effort to promote geopolitics, punishing harshly all those who didn’t embrace their geopolitical élan, as they have to also become promoters of Moldovenism and civic nation[1], according to the new-old strategy of the PDM.
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