The Party of Socialists’ interest in the current situation in Parliament and the country is to stake out the political field so that the party, in the future political maneuvers before the snap parliamentary elections, could come before the voters and say: ‘These are the things we did, they characterize us and with them we will go on”. On the other hand, the representatives of the Party of Action and Solidarity make reference to the deviations from the Parliament’s regulations in the process of adopting the last legislative proposals, the standing expert of the project Igor Boțan said in IPN’s public debate “Situation in Parliament and the country – Where are we going?”, referring to the divergent interests of the two parties.
“It goes to very subtle aspects. One: why had the powers of the newly elected President to be diminished by the law on the SIS? Here, the Party of Socialist does not have a proper explanation. A year ago, they insisted that the SIS should be under the President’s control given the constitutional powers enjoyed by the President and they should have maintained this position,” stated Igor Boțan.
As regards the political interests promoted by the economic legislative proposals, Igor Boțan said the politicians should do so that the economy and the people prosper. The state budget law, which is a fundamental one, should enable the people to make plans for next year. This law should be discussed thoroughly. Even if it is a pandemic year and there was drought and the Government had to cope with challenges that weren’t witnessed the previous years, this is not an excuse for the Parliament’s inactivity.
The expert said the fact that the legislative body hadn’t worked since the end of July until December 3 is a problem and it is unreasonable to say that the legislature before the presidential elections and during the election campaign should not work as it can serve as a rostrum for the MPs to agitate. The laws that touch the people’s feelings, as many of the bills proposed recently by the PAS and the PSRM, should be treated with maximum attention and should not be adopted in a hurry.
As regards the law on the functioning of languages, Igor Boțan said the law adopted in 1989 was very useful and confirmed the identity existing between the Moldovan language and the Romanian one. “No one doubts the fact that knowledge of the Russian language is something useful, but we have an existential problem that is not solved by the recently promoted law. We wanted harmonious bilingualism. No one wants to put the Russian speakers in a worse situation. We want a consolidate society with real bilingualism.”
As to the impact of the current situation in Parliament and the country on the international relations, the expert said if the tendency is to build the rule of law in Moldova and there are things that should be negotiated with the partners, the state should keep its word so that it is treated as a serious partner. In connection with the law referring to the Republican Stadium, he said that as an agreement with the U.S. was reached and this was later annulled, Moldova looks now less serious to the U.S.
To overcome the tense situation in Parliament, Igor Boțan recommends the politicians to discuss even if they have differing interests. He noted there are three solutions for dissolving Parliament: 1) the Constitutional Court should be notified of the dissolution of Parliament by a Parliament decision; 2) to wait for the President-elect to be invested and see if Ion Chicu keeps his word and resigns as Prime Minister, given that the Cabinet’s mandate is valid for the period until the election of the President; 3) the PAS and PSRM should meet and decide which of the two possibilities can be used.
The public debate “Situation in Parliament and the country – Where are we going?” was the 163rd installment of the series “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
