Before the turn of the year, IPN looks back on the events that had the biggest impact on Moldova and asks experts to comment on their immediate effects, as well on what we should expect of them in the long term.
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Rather than reflecting people's electoral preferences for political parties, the outcome of the November 30 election was more about choosing what course of development our country should follow, remarks the political pundit Igor Botan. We had the choice between the EU and the Eurasian Union, and most voters chose the EU. The outcome was influenced, among other factors, by a “hysterical campaign” warning of a so-called Moldovan Maydan allegedly plotted by the pro-Russian forces.
“Even if such ideas did exist, I think that campaign was exaggerated and it was intended to mobilize the voters with pro-European views who had grown disenchanted with the government over the last five years. Eventually they were successful, but we can see that the persecutions against the activists of the Patria Party, which was removed from the race, continue beyond the election. These persecutions, in my opinion, are needed just to emphasize post factum a threat that the authorities managed to deter”, says Igor Botan.
Instead, people elected a government that brought disillusion in the past and showed little political will to dramatically change things in Moldova. We can see that the negotiations on the formation of a new coalition proceed under a veil of secrecy, leaving the public at guess of what the negotiating parties might be conspiring. For Igor Botan, this is the greatest deception: that people had to choose the lesser evil, which grew to be bigger than it was once.
The expectations are pessimistic, because one cannot expect that a government which generated scandals over the past five years would become responsible overnight and start implementing the Association Agreement in earnest. Igor Botan thinks that there lies ahead a period of turbulence, uncertainties and scandals, but this time they will
be covered up more carefully. “My expectations are very pessimistic about the capacity of these parties to offer Moldova the opportunity of a normal development”.
Igor Botan has one simple argument to support his pessimism: four years ago the authorities promised they would promote a zero-tolerance policy towards corruption, but instead we see ever-growing corruption.
Botan says that a new government would have certainly cut some of the tentacles of corruption that have grown over the past five years. But with the previous people remaining, these tentacles can only grow stronger to tighten the corrupt clans' grip on power. The hysteria which they started, the electoral campaign which was in Botan's opinion the most dishonest and unfree on record, has showed its results. Moreover, the political analyst thinks that if other parties had won the election, the previous government wouldn't have let it happen: they would have appealed in the Constitutional Court, would have instigated some kind of Maydan, or would have pressured the President into not nominating a Prime Minister. This was, in his opinion, a victory undeserved and conjectural, a victory based to a certain extent on the tolerance of Moldova's development partners, a victory shrouded in the secrecy of power-sharing.
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Note: As part of this series, we have already reviewed the obtaining of the liberalized visa regime with the EU, the signing of the EU Association Agreement, and the Russian bans. The final episode will be dedicated to the formation of the parliamentary majority.
Mariana Galben, IPN