According to Sergei Ceban, holding a consultative referendum will allow the Democrats to redraw the political image of the future parliament after the elections. The expert is confident that Plahotniuc is able to use the mechanism of recalling deputies against current allies and even members of his own party. Sergei Ceban commented this for the RTA.
Weapons against competitors...
The consultative referendum on the election day is one of electoral technologies, but in this case it will become an instrument of manipulation in the post-voting period. It is useful to pay attention to the reaction of the European partners of Moldova. It did not take long to see the results – the Head of the EU Delegation to Moldova, Peter Michalko, has declared that the procedure for recalling lawfully elected deputies contradicts the norms of democracy. The position of Brussels speaks volumes: European Union closely monitors the course of the election campaign to parliament and is responsive to whenever they see signs of unfair competition on the part of democrats. If the European Ambassador admits that the elections may not be recognized even before the holding, it means that everyone in the EU perfectly understands the reason of recalling the deputies.
Those who note the consultative status of the referendum are completely right. Indeed, such a plebiscite will not have direct legal force. But what prevents democrats who have announced the pro-Moldova course from declaring the will of the people as the highest value and initiating changes in legislation? There are almost no rules in Moldovan politics, so there is no doubt that such Plahotniuc’s policy will be successful. As always, the Democratic Party will propose a simple choice to the new parliament – to support the initiative to recall deputies or to become its victim.
It is easy to guess that the conditional Sandu and Nastase, who enjoy support of the European Union, will not agree to be on the PDM side. Therefore, through the structures of power controlled by him, Plahotniuc will conduct an experiment on the recall of mandates to the ACUM faction. It is no coincidence that today everyone criticizes the right – total obstruction of Nastase and Sandu makes them the main anti-heroes of modern Moldova and shifts negatives from the image of Plahotniuc.
Among other things, in the future, the democrats will be able to bring down the hammer of a new mechanism for recalling deputies against anyone, be it a political force or an individual politician. This initiative will bring the most powerful tool of blackmail and political terror to Plahotniuc, and repression can affect not only competitors.
... and allies
There is hardly a person in Moldovan politics who doubts the cynicism of Vlad Plahotniuc. Perhaps some people underestimate the scale of his cynicism. If such people remain in the ranks of the Democratic Party, they should think hard, as allies of the coordinator are also under threat of losing the mandate.
If Plahotniuc succeeds in pushing the initiative to recall the deputies and limit their number, the democrats won’t need the ruling coalition at its current number. More precisely, they will need less mandates to control the power, and it means that the leader of the Democratic Party of the Republic of Moldova will be able to sacrifice a part of his former supporters.
50% of the current coalition in parliament are defectors from other parties that PDM has recruited over the past three years. It is believed that the democrats will try to do the same thing in the new parliament, only with the participation of deputies elected in single-member constituencies. Experts are confident that the government has implemented electoral reform just to have a ‘widow’ of independent single-mandate members, who will serve for creating a coalition at the right time.
After that, the democrats will be able to announce a reduction of the parliament, launch a recall mechanism and get rid of yesterday’s allies as of a ballast. Moreover, they will be not only single-mandate members, but also current members of the Democratic Party. Plahotniuc himself will obviously determine the victims according to the criteria of toxicity and personal loyalty to the leader. It is worth remembering that recalling a mandate is hard to imagine without a large-scale and dirty campaign to discredit its owner. So, the membership in the PDM or cooperation with it will not come cheap for future victims of this mechanism.
It is not excluded that the reduction of the parliament was conceived by PDM technologists as a rollback of electoral reform. According to this logic, the need to elect single-mandate deputies disappears by itself. However, it is rather difficult to justify the abuse of power with more violence against the norms of democracy, and such schemes of democrats are unlikely to find understanding in Brussels. Rather, on the contrary, because of these steps, Plahotniuc’s chances to finally break off relations with Brussels increase exponentially. Such manipulations with the political field of Moldova can be ‘pushed through’ by the democrats at the cost of incredible image losses, which one day will become critical and destroy the so far coherent vertical of the current government. Nervousness in the actions of the PDM and attempts to find a panacea for the loss of power have already become more noticeable, and supplies of non-trivial actions run short. 
