“On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the declaration of Moldova’s Independence, IPN News Agency decided to depict the portrait of the current Republic of Moldova. For the purpose, it provoked a number of people, including state officials, politicians, businessmen, civil rights activists and persons without posts and titles, but who have what to say. The generic picture is called “Thoughts about and for Moldova”.
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Valeriu Matei, director of the Romanian Cultural Institute “Mihai Eminescu” in Chisinau: “If there had been coherence in terms of internal and external policy, the Republic of Moldova could have been integrated into the European Union and in the North Atlantic security bodies, which would have ensured a safe future”.
– Mister Matei, how does the Republic of Moldova look like on the 25th anniversary of its Independent?
– Regretfully, there are many fundamental problems that haven’t been yet solved. I say regretfully because if there had been coherence in terms of internal and external policy, the Republic of Moldova could have been integrated into the European Union and in the North Atlantic security bodies, which would have ensured a safe future. It would have been now alongside the Balti States and the other EU member states.
The political trajectory of the Republic of Moldova in these 25 years has been very sinuous, with timid steps towards freedom and dramatic for the return to the totalitarian past, with the spreading of many complexes and untruths inherited from the Communist period, which had been ideological dominants during rather long periods of time. A functional economy hasn’t been built during these 25 years. The rule of law hasn’t been strengthened. The national and civic conscience hasn’t been rebuilt. Civil society is rather weak. The misinformation level is rather high. All these enabled to manipulate the population so that the people voted for parties that pleaded more for the Soviet past, rather than for the European future. The Republic of Moldova is always at the crossroads of history, while the uncertainty leads only to insecurity and instability.
– You said that we have a lot of unsolved problems. What should we do to solve them?
– Political will is first of all needed to promote the European dominant. This cannot be done without respecting the truth in identity-related problems. The population that does not know what origins it has and what the name of the mother tongue is, where it comes from, what historical, cultural and spiritual values it inherited will never know where to go to. Without rebuilding and consolidating the civic and national conscience, without strengthening civil society, informatizing all the bodies of society and correctly informing these, the future can be only gloomy. The independence of the mass media is a factor of primary importance in this regard. A really free press is firstly independent from economic viewpoint. If it is not independent in this respect, the press depends on all kinds of magnates and persons interested in promoting only the own interests, which are often strange or even hostile to the fundamental interests of society. If the economy of a state is functional and efficient, the mass media can exist on advertising and the editorial policy is really independent, promotes the truth and respects the Deontological Code. Otherwise, the dependent mass media provides the population with tendentious information depending on the interests of one group or another, more or less political.
The economic system can be consolidated by attracting investments. In the pre-accession stage, a vital problem will be to absorb European funds. Do we have sufficiently professional people at all the administrative levels, in the economic bodies and in civil society who can think up and implement large-scale projects? When will we witness the development of the processing industry in accordance with the potential of agriculture so as to supply only finished products of a high quality? The denaturing of the agrarian reform by adopting a hazardous law that led to the loss of production capacity is what made agriculture to lag behind. At this stage, the agricultural subsidies are vitally necessary. Step by step, there appear economic units and bodies able to cope with the competition on the market, where one can become popular only by providing products of a high quality.
The adoption of a new Constitution of the Republic of Moldova that would meet the European integration desiderata, would respect the historical and linguistic truth, would set clear criteria for separating the powers in the state and clear methods of interaction, and would ensure an efficient administration system could solve many of the problems faced now by the Republic of Moldova.
– The Republic of Moldova set off practically from the same point as the Baltic States. How did these states succeeded and why we didn’t reach the same level?
– Yes, we set off from the same point. At the end of the 1880s and the start of the 1990s, we were even in the vanguard of the process of abolishing the Soviet yoke and totalitarian regime. We were the first to recognize the independence of the first Baltic state that separated from the Soviet empire – Lithuania - on May 30, 1990. We did it before Latvia and Estonia. Unlike us, the Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians had always had the national and civic conscience well consolidated. They knew how to combine efforts and to follow the goal they set – to integrate into the EU and the North-Atlantic bodies. They went through economic blockades imposed by the Soviet Union and then by Russia, which is the de jure successor of the USSR. They also had special cards for food products, armed provocations with dozens of victims and more dramatic situations than in the Republic of Moldova, but didn’t deviate from this path.
Here, as a result of the aggression war against the Republic of Moldova, started by the military forces of the former Soviet empire taken over by Russia at the beginning of March, 1992, and the subsequent economic blockade, we witnessed the political recoil of the spring of 1994, when forces hostile to the national desiderata and independence from the former Soviet empire came to power. Denatured reforms followed. I already spoke about the reform in agriculture, the simulation of the justice sector reform, the adoption of a Constitution with eclectic and unclear content, by including Stalinist untruths about the identity, which threw society into the turmoil of long-term conflicts and contradictions, the delay in implementing the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU and its member states.
In fact, the Constitution of June 1994 reflected the interests of a group and of persons who held key state posts and was a legislative justification of the counteroffensive of the anti-democratic and antinational forces. That’s why we lag behind the Baltic States, which adopted very clear laws and a coherent constitutional system based on the experience of advanced democracies. The Constitution of the Republic of Moldova today looks like Arvinte’s surplice from whose bottom they permanently cut to add to the sleeves and then cut from the sleeves and added to the collar and it is now so uncertain and unclear that new amendments and adjustments are needed… I already said that a new Constitution should be better drafted, in accordance with the European integration desiderata. A democratic society is based on benchmarks tested in time by other countries, while functional models exist.
– How would you like the Republic of Moldova too look like in several years?
– I would like it to be a country that prospers from economic viewpoint, with living standards similar to those in the EU, with a united society, with a well-structured Constitution that does not need to be permanently modified, with a developed civil society, with really independent mass media and with free people with dignity; a state where the democratic reforms were completed and where hazardous experiments are no longer done. Some, when they come to power and do not know what to do, start to do reforms where these are not needed. What functions in a society should not be reformed. For example, the public administration system based on counties worked well and started to produce results, but the Communists came to power and restored the Soviet structure. They now speak again about the necessity of merging the rayons and of returning to counties because the current system is costly and inefficient. This truth has been known from the middle of the 1990s. Will someone ever answer for counter-reforms?
– How do you see the country’s future? Can we yet speak about a sovereign state?
– Regretfully, the fundamental desiderata set when declaring the independence weren’t achieved. Twenty-five years of ups and downs and of counterproductive political turns followed. The Republic of Moldova has always looked back with nostalgia without knowing what it looks for there… Like Orpheus who lost this way Eurydice. Few now look ahead and aim to really promote the main national interests. The national unity is and will always be the first of these desiderata.
We will live and see what happens. The population that was torn away from a people and a nation chooses the natural solution of rebuilding national unity when it becomes conscious. “The future and past/ Are two faces of the page/ The one who knows to study them/Sees the beginning at the end,” our national poet Mihai Eminescu says in his poem “Glosa” (“Gloss”).
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Valeriu Matei is a writer, historian, politician and a member of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova between 1990 and 2001. He has been a member of honor of the Romanian Academy since 2011.
Mariana Galben, IPN
The articles of the series “Thoughts about and for Moldova” started to be published on July 18. Among the protagonists are: Dumitru Alaiba, Iurie Ciocan, Ana-Maria Tulea, Ion Manole,Olga Gagauz, Stella Ciobanu, Iurie Leanca, Victor Parlicov, Doru Curosu, Igor Meriacre, Valeria Seican, Ciprian Raetski, Andrei Nastase Ghenadie Galca, Arcadie Barbarosie, Nicolae Botgros, Igor Dodon, Eugen Doga, Iulia Iabanji, Petru Macovei, Mariana Onceanu Hadarca, Maia Sandu etc.
