Shift change. The US bought Maia Sandu a brand new Western party
A new pro-European political party has emerged in Moldova. The founders of the Party of Change promise to defeat corruption, poverty and oligarchs. Experts and observers draw attention to the connections of party leaders with President Sandu and consider this an attack on her former allies Andrei Năstase and Renato Usatii.
The Man from European Integration Boulevard
The founder of the new party is lawyer and civil activist Stefan Gligor. In pro-European circles in Moldova, he is known, first of all, as the person who created for Maia Sandu five years ago the concept of her political party - the Party of Action and Solidarity, which brought Sandu to the presidency two months ago. In general, his biography is “the story of a hero of our time,” a characteristic description of the life path of a faithful public figure and politician consistently raised by Westerners.
Stefan Gligor is a graduate of the College of Europe with a degree in public international law. He worked as a legal consultant, then moved to the civil service - to the Ministry of Reintegration with Transnistria. In this department, Gligor worked as a lawyer in the department of information and analysis. In 2005-2006 he moved to the Information, Analysis and Forecasting Service of the Parliament of Moldova.
In 2007, two years before the overthrow of the communist government, Stefan Gligor suddenly left his civil service career and began working with various non-governmental organizations and also engaged in private legal practice. In this capacity, he invisibly participated in all major political events in the country. Gligor had a strong civic position, helped organize protest movements, and in recent years actively criticized the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party in power.
In 2019, in the wake of the change of power and the flight of PDM leader Vlad Plahotniuc, Stefan Gligor participates in the competition for the position of Prosecutor General of Moldova. It is characteristic that due to a lack of education and work experience in his specialty, Gligor was not suitable for this position. But at the insistence of Prime Minister Maia Sandu, parliament introduced amendments to the legislation that allowed him to participate in the competition. However, another candidate, Alexander Stoianoglo, won. Since then, Gligor has repeatedly criticized the competitor who beat him for visible or imagined shortcomings in the work of the prosecutor's office.
At all stages of his activities over the past five years, Stefan Gligor has constantly acted in conjunction with the current President Maia Sandu. The new political project is also to a certain extent connected with the elected president. The founders of the Party of Change included Sergiu Tofilat, presidential adviser on energy, and Corina Gaibu, the wife of Sergiu Gaibu, an economic expert appointed by Maia Sandu to the Supreme Security Council.
Operation-under-illustration
At the presentation of the Party of Change, Stefan Gligor noted that the new party will contribute to the replacement of corrupt elites and will promote social solidarity around the concept of good governance in the Republic of Moldova. Sergiu Tofilat, who participated in the conference, emphasized that his membership in the party does not contradict the law and he has the right to combine his political activities with his work as an adviser to President Sandu.
Among the party members is also Sergiu Postica, owner of the famous Chisinau restaurant “Grand Elysee”. Its presence, apparently, should symbolize participation in the political activities of the party and private business. During the epidemiological crisis, Postica took an active public position, criticized the mistakes of the authorities in regulating the activities of the horeca sector and repeatedly called for protests.
“I’m not going to defend my business, I’m going to change the situation in the country,” the entrepreneur noted while delivering a speech.
The party’s tasks are described in detail in the manifesto published on the political formation’s website. It notes that the Republic of Moldova is under the control of organized criminal groups and corrupt politicians who have turned citizens and the state into a source of illegal income. The usurpation of power by the Plahotniuc regime marked the peak of the degradation of state institutions and the destruction of the hopes of hundreds of thousands of citizens to live in a state with functional institutions, independent justice and, of course, prosperity.
“People are tired of poverty, but mostly of injustice, injustice and the fact that those who stole from us still remain unpunished,” the manifesto states, bashfully avoiding specifying that all these changes happened to the Republic of Moldova in the midst of “ success stories of the Eastern Partnership, when exclusively pro-European governments were in power.
Little Brother Party
The Moldovan expert community believes that the new party is not going to fight injustice, but to provide Maia Sandu with a loyal majority in the new parliament. Early parliamentary elections are just around the corner, for which the Party of Change is already actively preparing.
“The purpose of creating the party is to provide pro-Western President Maia Sandu with a parliamentary majority, taking away votes from Nastase and Usatii and, accordingly, preventing them from entering parliament,” says socialist MP Nikolai Pascaru. He is confident that the new party has been formed to destroy Nastase and those who dream of joining the camp of right-wing forces, including the Democratic Party.
“This party, of course, will not be for the country, not for Moldova. It will be one of those foreign-led parties, like PAS, that have fellows, NGOs, funding from abroad. The EU and the West have spent millions of euros reforming the judiciary and prosecutors so that we all have some of the most corrupt prosecutors and the most corrupt judicial system. And during the reforms, we lost billions from the state budget,” Pascaru noted.
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