Moldova: should the collapse of the ruling coalition be forced?
The website POLITNAVIGATOR.NET published a material entitled “Dodon, for the sake of an alliance with Sandu, refused to return Russian TV channels.” The material refers to the warning of the President of Moldova that raising the issue of repealing the “law on combating Russian propaganda” in the current conditions will lead to the collapse of the coalition and early elections under the old mixed system.
I want to clarify: I consider the “anti-propaganda” law adopted by the previous government under the leadership of the Democratic Party to be extremely discriminatory and frankly absurd. With the fact that the repeal of this law is absolutely necessary, Russian TV channels must be returned to the broadcast network, according to the majority of Moldovan society. Both the President of the country and the Socialist Party that supports him agree with this. And not a single representative of the largest left party in the Moldovan parliament has ever stated that the PSRM refuses this demand.
However, let's remember how the current anti-oligarchic coalition was created. A unique situation has developed in Moldova: the regime of the oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc is so tired of everyone - in the West, in the East, and within the country that the two largest forces - the Party of Socialists and the Akum bloc, profess diametrically opposed principles in the field of foreign policy, language and relationship to the historical past, decided to unite to cleanse the country of the criminal dictator and his minions.
The new coalition met with full support among external forces, which over the past years have been in a state of protracted conflict. We are talking, first of all, about Russia and the European Union, which were equally dissatisfied with the Plahotniuc regime. The oligarch himself and his Democratic Party, which had long positioned themselves as a centrist force, began to shift more and more to openly anti-Russian positions starting in 2017.
The expulsion of five Russian diplomats, the ban on Moldovan officials to participate in CIS events, the Constitutional Court of Transnistria declaring a “territory occupied by Russia”, declaring the Russian Deputy Prime Minister persona non grata, the adoption of the above-mentioned “law on combating Russian propaganda”, the announcement of the creation of a joint battalion with Ukraine and Georgia “to protect against Russian aggression”, pushing an anti-Russian resolution at the UN - these are just a few of the actions of Democratic Party officials of the last period. In fact, Plahotniuc completely adopted the Russophobic rhetoric from his friend and partner Petro Poroshenko.
Moreover, the speaker of the previous parliament, Adrian Candu, frankly stated in an interview on the eve of the elections: “It was we who expelled Russian diplomats, it was we who declared Rogozin persona non grata. We return Russians from our airport almost every day, banning them from entering Moldova, starting with the so-called journalists.”
In the overthrow of the Plahotniuc regime and the creation of an anti-oligarchic coalition, Moscow played a crucial role in the person of Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Dmitry Kozak. It was his enthusiastic support for the creation of a new coalition that played a role in the fact that such a coalition took place at all. Opponents often call the union of PSRM and Akum the “Kozak Alliance.” Indeed, there is a sharp improvement in relations between the new leadership of Moldova and the Russian Federation. For the first time in many years, the parliamentary delegation from Moldova that visited the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation included representatives of Akum. The shameful practice of deporting Russian journalists and political experts from the Chisinau airport has stopped.
At the same time, all parties understood that such a coalition, consisting of two multi-vector forces, could be of an exclusively temporary, situational nature. Sooner or later, both forces must enter into confrontation to defend their model of the country’s development and its geopolitical vector. The only question was based on what rules of the game this struggle would be conducted.
At the moment, a number of analysts express the opinion that the country is far from getting rid of the legacy of the Plahotniuc regime, that the influence of the oligarch in the authorities, in the justice system and especially at the local level is still strong. The media holding, owned by Plahotniuc, is still influential and recently received the right to broadcast another TV channel, which will be designed for propaganda among the Russian-speaking audience.
Today there is a well-founded fear that if early elections are called (and they will be held according to a mixed system, beneficial to the Democratic Party, which has significant influence at the local level), against the backdrop of popular dissatisfaction with the unpopular and frankly failed decisions of the Maia Sandu government, it could lead to a noticeable increase in the number of mandates PDM in the new parliament.
There is another danger that Western partners, primarily from overseas, will make efforts to create a right-wing coalition consisting of the Akum bloc (or part of it) and the PDM, “cleansed of Plahotniuc and his legacy.” Such a bloc will inevitably be supported by the unionists who are outside parliament today. Calls for this are already being heard intensively in the media space. Just the other day, the PDM curtsied to the Akum bloc, supporting their demand for the appointment of a “Varangian” from the European Union as prosecutor general. President Igor Dodon and the Socialist Party are categorically against the appointment of a foreign prosecutor.
The coalition will inevitably fall apart if one of its parts continues to raise conflicting topics despite the agreed moratorium on topics of geopolitics, language and history. To date, only the Socialist Party has observed this moratorium. Representatives of the Akum bloc over and over again allow themselves to actively raise and voice these topics. Moreover, they do this in an openly scandalous manner, as during the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Iasi-Chisinau operation. I dare to say that this policy of unilateral concessions has come to an end.
The collapse of the existing coalition and new early elections in Moldova are most likely inevitable, but it is unlikely that this process needs to be artificially accelerated. Especially on the eve of local elections, when the common enemy that brought these forces together into a single alliance is still strong in many regions of the country. Although, without a doubt, the duty of the deputies elected to Parliament from the Socialist Party is to defend the values for which people gave their votes to this party in the previous parliamentary elections. The Socialist Party understands this.
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