The leader of the Liberal Party (PL) Mihai Ghimpu in the program “Truth LIVE” commented on the impact of the protests on the current political developments. He explicitly referred to the large number of police officers involved in maintaining the security of the quarter where the president of the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) Vlad Plahotniuc lives and where there is also the PDM’s head office. The several thousand police officers against the thousands of protesters made Mihai Ghimpu conclude that Vlad Plahotniuc is not afraid of protests. To argue his conclusion, the Liberal leader associated Vlad Plahotniuc with the secretary general of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, meaning this has full control over the state institutions and dictatorial power that is sufficient for preventing any danger.

The Liberal leader’s remarks are interesting, but incomplete and somehow confusing. First of all, there is no reason for the leader of the PDM Vlad Plahotniuc to be afraid of the protests as the organizers insist on the peaceful character of the demonstrations. Moreover, the experience of the dozens of protests mounted in 2015-2016 showed these were peaceful indeed. Surely, the leader of the PL can invoke the own example of January 20, 2016, which probably marked him profoundly. Unlike the Liberal leader, the Democratic leader does not allow personal contact with the citizens, if only these manage to go through the cordons of his bodyguards and, in general, of the security cordons near the buildings where he lives and works. Secondly, the juggling of figures about the number of protesters versus the number of police officers who maintain security cannot induce or, on the contrary, annihilate fear. The number of protesters is important for the organizers to assess their support potential.

However, if they insist on the importance of the number of participants in the protests mounted by the politicians of the extraparliamentary opposition, the figure should be compared with the number of people at the protests organized by the largest and most influential parties: the PDM – the most influential ruling party with unlimited resources of all kinds, and the Party of Socialists (PSRM) – the party with the largest electoral pool, of about 40%. In this regard, the images with the 3,000-4,000 protesters in the Great National Assembly Square, who oppose the nullification of the elections of June 3, 2018, should be compared, at least visually, with the 70,000 people reported by Publika TV, who came to the National Opera House to support Vlad Plahotniuc’s candidacy for premiership on January 13, 2016. Or should be compared with the 20,000 protesters reported by the newspaper “Arguments and Facts” as participants in the September 24, 2017 protest mounted by the PSRM against the annulment of the referendum initiated by President Igor Dodon. If someone wonders now how the square of the National Opera House could accommodate 70,000 supporters of the PDM, while the recent protests in the central Square of Chisinau involved only 3,000-4,000 or at most 7,000 people, they should accept the existence of optical effects that mislead, not the propagandistic, misleading effects of the large parties served by media holdings.

As to the comparison of Vlad Plahotniuc’s power with that of secretary generals, it should be noted that the observations and findings of the Liberal leader Mihai Ghimpu are absolutely insufficient. The secretary generals held power legally, based on the famous Article 6 of the constitution of the USSR, which expressly noted the party’s managing and directing power and placed the secretaries general somewhere between God and society. Based on what personal virtues and fundamental legal documents can the leader of the PDM Vlad Plahotniuc hold absolute power? Mihai Ghimpu does not answer this question. It’s a pity as the whole country knows that namely he was one of the fervent promoters of the politicization of the law enforcement and regulatory institutions, being also the signatory of a secret protocol in this regard! The whole country remembers that from among the political leaders namely Mihai Ghimpu initially supported the large-scale protests against the stolen US$ 1 billion. If the PL had remained on the side of the protesters, the creation of the Platform “Dignity and Truth” and the Party “Action and Solidarity” wouldn’t have been necessary. But the same Liberal leader shortly refused to support the protests, taking sides with Vlad Plahotniuc, evidently for the purpose of saving the European course of the Republic of Moldova.

The key question is – why the plea of Mihai Ghimpu and the Liberal Party in favor of the European course ended with the accumulation by Vlad Plahotniuc of a power similar to that of secretaries general? If the Liberal leader answered honestly this question, he would reach the conclusion that someone should be afraid not of protests, but of secret protocols signed in the name of the unlimited and unconstrained good.

IPN experts