A streak of bad luck for Plahotniuc

The Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc began to be haunted by failures. After the parliamentary elections, the number of deputies under his control in the country's legislative body decreased significantly. Both competing parliamentary forces - the Socialist Party and the pro-European AKUM bloc - refused to consider any options for a coalition with the Democratic Party led by Plahotniuc.

Then Plahotniuc’s close friend and ally Petro Poroshenko lost the presidential election in Ukraine. The Moldovan oligarch is trying to improve relations with the election winner Vladimir Zelensky, but to no avail. According to a number of media reports, Plahotniuc arrived in Turkey, where Zelensky was vacationing after his election victory, and tried to meet with him, but the young winner of the Ukrainian elections refused to meet with him.

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Poroshenko and Plahotniuc are two politicians of the same formation. Two oligarchs who found themselves at the crest of power thanks to color revolutions in their countries. Both of them were part of the previous government and played an important role there: Plahotniuc owes his rise to the communist president Vladimir Voronin. Poroshenko was a minister in the government of Mykola Azarov. But at the decisive moment, they both played a key role in the coups: Plahotniuc joined the revolutionaries at a subsequent stage, Poroshenko himself took part in organizing, financing and promoting the “revolution of dignity”.

Both of them, Plahotniuc and Poroshenko, were initially seen as representatives of the “peace camp,” and both subsequently, in an effort to gain support from Washington, made Russophobia their export product. They both cracked all possible “Overton windows” in relations with Russia. In return, the United States forgave them everything, including violation of all legal norms, monstrous corruption, raider takeovers, enriching themselves and those around them at the expense of the people.

There is, however, a real difference between the two politicians: Poroshenko achieved his legitimization by becoming president, Plahotniuc had to remain in the shadows for a long time. In 2016, he tried to take the post of head of government, but due to massive public protests, he failed. Instead of himself, the Moldovan oligarch appointed the absolutely tame Pavel Filip as prime minister, while he himself remained the leader of the Democratic Party.

Pavel Philip.

Plahotniuc very successfully used the introduction of a mixed electoral system in order to ensure success for his party in the parliamentary elections. Thanks to the victory of the candidates under his control in single-member constituencies, Plahotniuc has 41 out of 101 votes in the new parliament - this is more than the other two parliamentary factions. But these mandates are still not enough to independently form the leadership of parliament and the government.

Neither the PSRM nor the parliamentary bloc “AKUM” categorically intend to create any ruling coalitions with Plahotniuc. If previously, quite recently, many experts spoke about an “almost ready” coalition between the PDM and the PSRM, then after an unequivocal reaction from Moscow, expressed through the mouth of Dmitry Kiselev in the Vesti Nedeli program, and the subsequent decision of the Republican Council of the PSRM, this option is practically not let's implement.

As for the pro-European coalition between the PDM and the AKUM bloc, ideal for the West, the latter cannot agree to it for fundamental reasons: the basis of the program of the opposition right bloc is the “liberation” of the state “captured” by the Plahotniuc regime.

For the West, it would be ideal for Plahotniuc to go into the shadows, stop claiming the top positions in the state and hand over the leadership of the party to someone else. But the main puppeteer of Moldovan politics clearly does not intend to go into the shadows.

Only one circumstance saves Plahotniuc: the Socialist Party and the AKUM bloc, with which a significant part of the voters of both political formations require coalitions to overthrow the ruling regime, take fundamentally different positions on the most sensitive issues - the foreign policy vector, interethnic relations and language policy. Since voting in elections in Moldova is geopolitically motivated, making concessions on these issues means demobilizing a significant part of its voters.

Now Plahotniuc has two options. The first is to wait for early elections, in which, if they are held according to a mixed system and simultaneously with local elections, the Democratic Party has every chance of success. The second option involves repurchasing “carcasses” from other parliamentary factions. However, what Plahotniuc did in January 2016 is unlikely to happen today. President Igor Dodon said that he would not tolerate such a scenario, would refuse to approve such a government and would call on his supporters to take to the streets. Given the dissatisfaction with Plahotniuc both in Moscow and Brussels, this option could end in complete disaster for him.

Vladimir Plahotniuc has only one option left: to prepare for early parliamentary elections, simultaneously creating ways for himself to painlessly leave the country’s political scene.