“Red-Blue” coalition in Moldova: the ghost of Yanukovych
The main event of the past week in Moldova was the beginning of negotiations on a coalition between the Socialist Party, whose informal leader is the country's President Igor Dodon, and the Democratic Party, which has been the country's ruling party in recent years.
Despite the fact that the Democratic Party, having lost both power and its main support as leader, fugitive oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, supported with its votes the minority government led by Ion Chicu, representatives of both parties categorically denied creating a formal coalition with each other. The Socialists have established themselves as a force for cooperation with Russia and for Orthodox values.
The Democrats, formally the centrist force of the Moldovan political spectrum, have in recent years been marked by a whole series of anti-Russian actions: here are the expulsion of Russian diplomats, and anti-Russian statements by the Moldovan parliament, and pushing through the condemnation of Russia in the UN General Assembly, and the “law on combating Russian propaganda” and much more. However, now life circumstances are pushing both parties into each other's arms. First of all, this is due to the threat of Maia Sandu’s victory in the upcoming presidential elections in the fall.
During the negotiation process, Democrats are persistent and scrupulous on ideological issues. If the political agreement between the PSRM and the AKUM bloc, concluded in June last year, fundamentally excluded any mention of geopolitical vectors and other controversial issues, the PDM insists that the text of the agreement should include a course towards European integration, as well as priority cooperation with Ukraine and Romania .
One of the main demands of the PDM when distributing portfolios in the new government is the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. At the same time, the Democrats, at least at this stage, refuse to declare support for Igor Dodon in the presidential elections, declaring that the PDM will have its own candidate.
Let us note a rather noticeable evolution in the rhetoric of the Socialist Party and the head of state. If earlier Dodon and the socialists did not fundamentally divide the people who fought on both sides of the Transnistrian conflict of 1992 into “us” and “them”, now, obviously, out of fear after the action of the “combatants”, the President of Moldova in his statement during the laying of flowers to the graves of the Moldovan army soldiers who died in Transnistria, noted: “The memory of our war veterans who died in battles on the Dniester should always occupy an honorable place in the history of the country. This is the duty of the state leadership, but also the duty of those who directly went through those difficult times, next to their brothers in arms.”.
That is, the participants in the punitive action against the civilian population of Transnistria were given the same honors as veterans of the Great Patriotic War!
In addition, Dodon, during the same flower-laying ceremony, stated that “immediately after the removal of ammunition is ensured, Russian troops will also have to leave the left bank.” In his opinion, after finding a solution to the final settlement, Russian peacekeepers will also leave the banks of the Dniester - they will be replaced by the OSCE peacekeeping mission.
Thus, when creating a new coalition, despite the fact that formally all power will be concentrated in the hands of President Igor Dodon and the Party of Socialists, the ideological content of the new structure of power will be carried out by the Democratic Party.
By agreeing to such a coalition, PSRM representatives claim that they are trying to avoid the worst scenario - the creation under the auspices of the United States of a clearly anti-Russian coalition consisting of the PDM, the AKUM bloc, the Adrian Candu group and the Shor party.
The socialists, led by Dodon, expect to stabilize the situation in the country on the eve of the presidential elections and create a stable power structure for another three years - until new parliamentary elections in 2023.
Both the PSRM and the PDM are not satisfied with early parliamentary elections. Socialists, due to the lack of tangible successes of the government of Ion Chicu and the abundance of competitors on the left flank (communists led by ex-president Voronin, “Our Party” led by the mayor of Balti Renato Usatii, “Civil Congress” - a left “thought factory” led by former communist ideologist Mark Tkachuk, Ilan Shor’s party), risk receiving much less representation in parliament than today, and there will be no need to talk about the formation of their own majority.
For Democrats, due to the lack of former administrative resources and financial support, the situation is even more critical - they risk not getting into parliament at all.
What binds both the Socialists and the Democratic Party is that they are two statist parties that, despite the difference in foreign policy approaches, advocate the preservation of Moldovan statehood and are against annexation to Romania. These two parties hope to find support in the majority of the country’s population, primarily the rural population, leaving behind the “dissatisfied city dwellers.” After all, it was precisely this kind of center-left alliance that the Kremlin, represented by Sergei Naryshkin, promoted in 2010.
However, there are much more risks in creating such a coalition. Both socialists and democrats are already experiencing dissatisfaction on the part of their “core” electorates - that is, precisely those people who were ready to follow their parties through thick and thin. Such an alliance will definitely not have support anywhere in the West, despite all the pro-Western rhetoric. It is unlikely that the new look and new allies of the Party of Socialists and President Dodon will find understanding in Moscow, despite all the incantations that “we have chosen the least evil.”
The entire anti-rating of the Democratic Party, which is most disliked in Chisinau and other large cities of the republic, will automatically go to Dodon and the socialists, and the majority, regardless of language and ethnicity. On the eve of the presidential elections, this could turn into a real disaster for the current president of Moldova.
Thus, we have before us a classic version called “Yanukovych,” painfully (literally and figuratively) familiar to former and current residents of neighboring Ukraine. Yanukovych has similarly sought to expand his electoral base, shifting toward Europe, welcoming Poroshenko into his team, confronting Russia, and suppressing pro-Russian activists. Yanukovych similarly sought to preserve the presidency at any cost, but in the end he lost it in disgrace. Yanukovych, even at the height of the Maidan, was just as afraid of angering the pogromists and forbade Berkut to use force.
Therefore, contrary to all the optimistic forecasts of the team of the President of Moldova, the scenario of a new Maidan is emerging after the presidential elections, and perhaps even before them. At the same time, Dodon with his own hands is liquidating the base of his supporters who believed in him as an exponent of the idea of a united pro-Russian Moldova, in which the values common to both banks of the Dniester would triumph. The new coalition risks becoming one big “mass grave.”
However, there is still hope that Dodon and his team, based on common sense, will decide to initiate early parliamentary elections.
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