All the parties that have made it into Parliament following the February 24 elections should consider themselves winners, thinks Victor Juc, of the Institute for Legal, Political and Sociological Research, as all of them have outperformed their own previous results.
“The Socialists polled by over 100,000 more votes than in 2014. I can see they are very disappointed by not winning a 50%+ majority as they hoped, but that was unachievable in the first place. The Democrats garnered an additional 80,000 votes, which is good enough; nobody thought they would, but they did it. The bloc NOW got by 35,000 votes more than the Liberal Democratic Party in 2014. I’m saying this because the bloc has occupied the center-right segment of the political spectrum vacated by the Liberal-Democrats. And this despite the bloc not having the substantial means that its precursor had in 2014. And then there’s Shor Party, which polled over 115,000 votes. Some say it’s a lot, some say it’s not enough, but the fact is they nailed it”, Victor Juc stated during the talk show “Fabrika” on Publika TV.
The obvious losers are the Communists, the Liberals and Renato Usatii’s Our Party, but Juc thinks there’s still a chance for them to rebound if they can show good results in the local elections later this year.
Pundit Corneliu Ciurea thinks the first step towards forming the next majority is “by right” with the Democratic Party, which should act as a “binding agent” in the future coalition. “We can see that the other parties are very careful, indicating unwillingness to come forward with such initiatives. Moreover, they expect the Democratic Party to make the first step. The bloc NOW made it clear even before elections that they would not enter any coalition, anticipating such an initiative coming from the DPM”, said Ciurea.
Ciurea noted the “very curious” remark by Igor Dodon that the Socialists would consider a coalition only it it’s not preceded by defections. “The Socialists’ biggest source of concern, a bombshell hanging over their heads, is that one day they could see defectors, ‘traitors’ and ‘political tourists’ leaving their ranks. So Dodon is trying to anticipate such developments by conditioning the potential talks with the Democrats”, said Ciurea.
In has been estimated that the Socialist Party would get 33 seats in the next parliament, followed by the Democrats with 31, the electoral bloc NOW with 27 and Shor Party with 7, in addition to 3 independents.
