The voices of the pro-Russian majority in Moldova are being torn apart by three forces

The Republic of Moldova is preparing for the presidential elections, and the entire expert and media community is discussing the results of a fresh sociological survey. Fresh in the most literal sense - the process of working with respondents was completed by iData on October XNUMX, and the results were published on October XNUMX. And some people, presumably, didn’t really like these very results...

Favorite and two semi-finalists

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The undisputed leader of electoral preferences is the current President Igor Dodon; 38,2% of undecided voters are ready to vote for him. His main rival, former Prime Minister Maia Sandu, is significantly behind with only 29,7%.

“The first of the impassable” are no less interesting. The mayor of Balti, Renato Usatii, has 12,8%, and the deputy and former Minister of Ecology Violeta Ivanova has 8,5%. And this says a lot.

Igor Dodon's rating is based on his relations with Russia. Until about 2013, he was a completely unpopular politician. Both opponents and supporters of the current Moldovan president admit: his rapid rise is due, first of all, to joint photos with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

It has long been joked that Moldova ranks first in the world according to Putin’s rating. Which, by the way, is not a bit of a joke - the popularity of GDP among Moldovans has always been at such sky-high levels that at some point sociologists simply stopped including an item on the popularity of foreign politicians in surveys - one could be left without Western grants.

Renato Usatii has problems in Moscow and generally tries not to appear on Russian territory. However, he plays out the image of a completely pro-Russian politician. Four years ago, he supported Dodon in the second round. Now he states that this will happen “only if I die.” The socialists who support Dodon, in turn, are afraid that Usatii will give votes to Sandu... both of them are mistaken - Usatii cannot go and give the votes of his supporters to a clearly pro-Western candidate. As if they, his supporters, will ask him!

Violeta Ivanova represents the party of businessman Ilan Shor (he himself cannot run - he is not forty years old), the wife of the Russian singer Jasmine, who also has problems with the law in the Russian Federation. This party declares slogans for the revival of collective farms and the Soviet social system and focuses on pensioners, who for the most part are also for Russia.

So, pro-Russian candidates occupy first, second and fourth places in the ranking of voter preferences. At the same time, the “Westerner” Andrei Nastase, who is in fifth place, with 4,7%, is almost half behind Ivanova and almost three times behind Usatii.

Dodon, Usatii and Ivanova have the support of about 60 percent of decided voters. Sandu, Nastase and the rest (their rating is in the range of statistical error) of the “right” candidates together have about 40 percent, half as much.

True, another point of the survey is interesting - “Who would you choose between Dodon and Sandu.” Here the gap is already smaller - 54 percent versus 46. That is, there are six percent of pro-Russian voters who will not vote for Dodon under any circumstances - but this does not stop them from being pro-Russian.

In general, if Mr. Dodon in some unthinkable way manages to lose the second round of the presidential election in the current situation, it will be his personal fiasco. But the pro-Russian majority in Moldovan society is not going anywhere.

Left never to return

But even in the middle of last year, the right controlled almost all of the executive power in the country. Sandu was prime minister, Nastase was deputy prime minister and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Their bloc, even though it took only third place in the elections (after the pro-presidential Party of Socialists and the previously ruling Democrats), bargained for the right to form a “minority government” and take control of all key ministries (Dodon only negotiated for his team the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defense).

However, by November the rightists had left the ruling coalition. Under a clearly far-fetched pretext, they opposed the presidential nomination of Alexander Stoianoglo for the post of Prosecutor General. They presented this as “pressure from the hand of Moscow” - despite the fact that back in 2015, the same Sandu and Nastase stood up for a government in which Stoianoglo was supposed to become the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (at that time he apparently suited them).

Western curators clearly understood that with such “successes,” Sandu and Nastase would lose not only the local elections (held on the eve of the collapse of the coalition), but also the presidential ones, and in the future, possible parliamentary ones. We had to take them out from under the attack - they would not have left the government chairs of their own free will.

And now a year has passed. How do you like the results?

From “bad” presidential ones to “terrible” parliamentary ones

Almost all parties participating in the presidential elections (and certainly all those who boycotted the campaign) are demanding early parliamentary elections to be held at the beginning of 2021. The same Sandu and Nastase actively promised to achieve this. I wonder why?

The “Dignity and Truth” platform of Andrei Năstase, according to the same survey, simply does not make it into parliament. The democrats, who have broken up into factions, also fly past. There is nothing to say about the other parties, which have long been active only in the battle for the next grant from Washington, Berlin or Bucharest.

What to do? Unite into a bloc again? Will not work. Nastase severely violated the agreement with Sandu (she helps him in local elections, he helps her in presidential elections and receives the post of prime minister for this), collected signatures for his nomination in secret. Supporters of the new union simply will not forgive.

Nastase may try to unite around himself supporters of the unification of Moldova with Romania - but even then he will lose more than he gains - goodbye to the image of an out-of-system politician, hello to the anti-rating of a radical.

Block with one of the former Democrats? But these are the ones in Moldova who are hated by both the pro-Russian and pro-European electorates. Previously, they had administrative resources, now they only have hatred and contempt from voters.

So, of the pro-Western parties, only Maia Sandu’s “Action and Solidarity” makes it into the potential new parliament. If the elections were held this Sunday, it would receive 33 mandates out of 101. Another 41 would go to the pro-Dodon Socialist Party. The rest would divide between Usatii’s “Our Party” and Shor’s Party (that’s what the “Shor” Party is called).

Only a third of parliament! Moldovan Westerners did not even think about such a “chic” representation in their nightmares.

This, however, does not mean that pro-Western forces would remain completely on the sidelines. In the end, Dodon, Usatii and Shor hate each other fiercely, and may not agree on the three of them. And Sandu is unprincipled enough to unite with any two against any third. But in any case we will have to forget about the minority government. They will appoint some kind of control body to “monitor compliance with democratic norms” - and thank you for that.

Whatever the new Moldovan parliament is like, whatever the coalition is in it, it will be pro-Russian. Another question is whether politicians will decide to go early.