The volatility of political circumstances has led to positive developments in the country's European agenda. However, the chronic weaknesses of the institutional construction of the state, strongly influenced by political instability and alternation of power, caused certain setbacks, writes the researcher Dionis Cenuşa in an analytical article for the IPN Agency.
Contrary to the negative forecasts, Moldova has come out of the orbit of the oligarhic government, which generated deformities in the European agenda throughout 2018, the researcher notes.
In his opinion, the "anti-oligarchic spring" produced in 2019, without the involvement of the society in protests, created a fertile ground for the more active involvement of the politicians in the reforms. He points out that even if of a temporary nature, the large-scale political changes, for a small country like Moldova, have generated ambitious hopes for the regeneration of the population’s Europtimism.
The researcher presents three phases that marked the internal and external fluctuations of the state affairs. Since the demolition of the oligarchic regime, due to an anomalous partnership between (geo-)political forces, usually incompatible, it led to the fortification of the pro-Russian forces in just half a year, summarizes the researcher the political developments of 2019.
Materialist pragmatism towards the European integration, characteristic for the Democrats under Vladimir Plahotniuc's leadership, has revived after the Socialists dismissed the government of Maia Sandu, Dionis Cenuşa argues.
According to him, the intense interaction with the Russian decision-makers and the international organizations dominated by them, such as the Eurasian Economic Union, strongly promoted by the office of the President Igor Dodon, has leveled the European dimension of the foreign policy. Such tendencies place Moldova in a format similar to that of Armenia.
Thus, the public is flooded with Machiavellian manifestations in which the use of economic and political pragmatism concurrently towards the West and the East becomes an indispensable norm. After a decade since the Communists left the power in 2009, the multi-vector foreign policy is again a natural element of the political thinking of the ruling elites in Moldova, says the researcher.
The European conditionality and the existence of the pro-EU parties are a combination of efficient factors that complicate attempts to mimic reforms. However, the deepening of the European integration depends on the future electoral competitions. The pro-EU political parties have to show the ability to overcome the strategies carried out successfully so far by the pro-Russian forces, concludes Dionis Cenuşa.
