Parliament … is dead! Long live the Parliament! Info-Prim Neo analysis, part I

Old anecdote: Four persons play cards in the other life. Periodically, the game is interrupted because one of them disappears and appears at certain intervals. After disappearing for several times, he was asked where he went every time. “I’m called to the intensive care hall,” he answered. The Parliament of Moldova of the sixteenth legislature has not yet sat at a plenary meeting after the pause announced on February 3 and will probably never meet again even if it has the right to adopt simple decisions and laws after the expiration of its mandate on March 7. It seems that the Parliament passed away even if the demise will be formally recorded by ‘medical examiners’ only after the new legislature is elected on April 5. The interest in the current Parliament in this period is justified especially by the examination of its performance during four years, which could help anticipate the performance of the future Parliament. It is one month until the elections and the voters are yet to clarify a number of things, including whether they want or not that the model of the 2005-2009 Parliament is reedited or modified and how. [Contradictory impressions and double standards] On the one hand, inside and outside the country the Parliament of the sixteenth legislature left the impression of an efficient, stable and even modern body on certain segments. Many times, foreign experts and international organizations praised the Moldovan authorities for the legislation, including its adaptation to the European norms. During four years, the legislative process has been regular, uninterrupted and without destabilizing excesses. On the other hand, the same experts and the same international organizations as well as the national public opinion pointed to serious problems in certain areas as regards the quality of the laws and the putting of laws into practice. For many years, these problems have included the quality of justice, the human rights, the freedom of the press, etc. The current Parliament also did not manage to take Moldova out of the monitoring of the Council of Europe and to remove the stigma of record holder in the history of the Council of Europe from Moldova’s image. It also maintained the impression that the legislative process and the process of improving the quality of the life in Moldova are two parallel lines that can hardly ever intersect each other in a foreseeable future. We can speak about several reasons for such a paradoxical state of affairs. [Subordinate Parliament in parliamentary country] Though it was a Parliament in a parliamentary country, with broad and important duties, the legislative only created laws and did not make observable effort to make use of its rights to control the implementation and observance of the laws. Maybe it did not want, was not capable, gave up willingly or forcedly, but this is the reality. The Parliament convened the Government and other central executive authorities rather seldom to present reports, while the prime ministers and senior managers of key ministries practically did not present themselves. But they went with reports to the Presidential Hall every time they were called and it was never known if they were to go out in the same post or not. Many ministers in this period found out about their dismissal from the press at a time when the Constitution offers the Parliament broad powers, while the head of state has only representative powers. There was practically no parliamentary hearing with serious impact on the many and serious problems that the country faced in this period. Hearings took place elsewhere and the most serious decisions were taken not in the Parliament. It seems that the decisions concerning the work of the Parliament, what it should and shouldn’t do, were made also in a different place. The Parliament worked according to a mechanism based on extra-parliamentary principles. Therefore, there was no communication within the Parliament and between the Parliament and the society. [Chronic deficit of communication and consensus] The word Parliament has Latin, French roots and means to speak, discuss, communicate. Unlike other powers in the state – the executive and judicial ones – the Parliament is a deliberative body, i.e. it deliberates, communicates, discusses, considers from all viewpoints until signing a decision into law. In democracy, this type of existence is mandatory because all those that entered the Parliament represent certain groups of people and they all have the right to existence. The current Parliament fulfilled badly the communication and deliberation tasks, both as form and as content. During four years, the communication has been reduced to exchanges of replies between the factions of the government coalition – the Communist Party (PCRM) and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (PPCD) – and the Opposition parties – the Moldova Noastra Alliance (AMN) and the Democratic Party (PDM), plus several nonaffiliated MPs. Usually, the legislative documents were passed by a majority vote without debates, as if it was the homework, without taking into account the opinion of the Opposition. From this viewpoint, the legislative was rather like an executive that fulfilled what was decided outside the Parliament. It was a pocket legislative that can be described by the owner of the pocket and by those empowered to put or take things out of that pocket with a certain purpose. There were several exceptions. But, as it is known, the exceptions confirm the rule. The documents concerning the European course of the country and the Transnistrian conflict were passed by consensus. But this happened not because all the political forces represented in the Parliament have the same orientation and do not have divergences on the given problems or used the rule of communication and consensus when tackling them. As regards the European issue, the MPs voted with the hands what over a million Moldovans voted with the legs. Any other decision or attempt would have been sanctioned severely. The population’s position on the Transnistrian dispute is also quite clear. The decisions about the winter and summer vacations of the MPs were also voted unanimously…. The MPs did not communicate between them and did not offer a model of civilized and efficient communication to the society. This is serious for the democratic prospects of a Moldovan society that got rid of totalitarianism. The fact that the Parliament did not communicate with the society in these four years is even more serious. The live broadcast of the Parliament’s sittings was stopped in the same authoritarian way by the majority coalition. The information about the activity and, respectively, responsibilities of the MPs was left to the discretion of media outlets, depending on their professionalism and interests of the groups that control them. Generally, during four years the population had not been provided with first-hand information, but interpretations. This means lack of chronic and planned transparency that is dangerous in essence. At the start of the mandate, one of the leaders of the government coalition was asked if the population would be consulted about a problem that was broadly and heatedly discussed in the society. “We ask no one. We decide. We will answer at the next elections,” the given person responded. It is said that after certain decisions were made, the given leader and/or the party that he/she heads obtained a television channel that was earlier public. A special law needed to be adopted in the Parliament for this case – the Broadcasting Code by which the given public channel was denationalized. The next part of the Info-Prim Neo analysis “Parliament … has passed away! Long life the Parliament!” will focus on other aspects of the current Parliament’s performance.