A Coalition with Socialists, An Alliance with ACUM or An Internal Schism: What Awaits Moldova’s Democratic Party

Marina Dragalin Rumors has it that the coming Democratic Party split in the parliamentary faction may turn out to be just a trick: currently PDM is very advantageously using its centrist position between the rival PSRM and ACUM. As a political project the Democratic Party of Moldova was obviously strongly affected by Vlad Plahotniuc’s escape. After the notorious deoligarchization started last year, PDM faced with persistent demands to ban its activities and members “lustration”. This was especially contrasted when compared to the “imposing” party position at the top of country's political chain until June 2019. Aiming to get rid of negative associations with its past leader, the Democratic Party promptly launched the process of “updating” and changing its image. And then it very successfully disposed of the only significant political asset - 29 seats in parliament, having voted in November 2019 with the socialists for the Chicu government. It was not a "free of charge" vote that the PDM faction offered. First of all, Prime Minister Chicu himself was the Minister of Finance in the Democratic government, thus, the heads of ministries of finance and economics are now held by people who are also members of that government. Secondly, the Democrats were able to achieve a revival and a number of their projects: “Good Roads”, “First House” and “Doctor for You”. Additionally, the Democratic Party constantly keeps its new partners on their toes, hinting at the availability of alternative options. That is why, the democrat Alexandru Jizdan warned the socialists in November: “If this government copes with nothing, the Democratic Party will put forward a vote of no confidence against it. If the ACUM block shares this same vision with us, then we’ll have the necessary number of votes to remove this government.” At the same time, PDM continues to pretend that it is in opposition and is not involved in the process of government. Fairly wise decision, taking into account the current situation in the country. According to Constantin Stere, associate professor of law at the University, lawyer and former judge for Pavel Midrigan, it’s too early to talk about the PDM returning to the political scene: Democrats hold a boxer position who only counters strikes, but does not strike himself. “They lost part of the supporters which are those who joined their party primarily having some selfish interests but who have already run away, while those who did not leave are people having nowhere to go since other political parties would not accept them. Therefore, they are now forced to stay on the heap and wait for an opportunity,” the expert notes. Obviously, the chance of the Democrats is the largest political forces struggle for the presidency. And they made an effort to spur this fight. At the same time, grows the opinion that the fact Social Democratic Party accepted the Socialists side has broken the party integrity, and now it is actually falling apart due to rebels’ segregation, who consider cooperation with Dodon a wrong decision. The media even reported that there were at least 13 deputies in the Democratic Party who were ready to create another faction. The split is also fueled by cases like the December incident with different positions of the party’s leadership on the vote of no confidence to Defense Minister Victor Gaiciuc. According to political analyst Corneliu Curea, the struggle for influence is now unfolding in PDM. “The troublemaker is the parliamentary faction. Pavel Filip tried to be a leader in this faction, but he did not quite succeed, and he was replaced by Diacov. That is, different processes are going on inside the faction, many deputies want a better political future for themselves,” the expert comments. At the same time, he notes that Pavel Filip mainly controls the situation and that the local elections showed that he was able to maintain the party’s unity. By the way, Pavel Filip himself denies information about the split: “I hope that the faction will remain in full force until the next parliamentary elections.” The expert community is closely watching the power balance in the Moldavian establishment. The Democratic Party, has no obvious chance to "do it" on its own (although Pavel Filip plans to run for president, but this is perhaps also only part of the behind-the-scenes transaction), so most likely will continue to use its status as a "golden share", temporarily strengthening one of the needed sides, but with a constant benefit for itself. Therefore, representatives of the Democratic Party constantly talk about the possibility of an alliance with one or another political formation, referring to the "interests of their constituents." In fact, analyzing the events after deoligarchization, we can conclude that Democrats provided the next opportunities: for the Sandu government and then the Chicu government to express themselves; to people to feel the difference; and to themselves to analyze the reactions and preferences of potential voters. Having essentially fallen into the background, the Democratic Party won time for updating, rebranding and analyzing the population political wishes. The Moldovan people are tired of constant need to make choices - political, strategic, civilizational; choose between pro-European, pro-Moldavian or pro-Romanian views, between right and left, the European Union and Russia. The Democratic Party opinions apparently did not accidentally split along practically the same lines as the opinions of the population. From this perspective, the split story looks like a skillful imitation played out according to a well-thought-out scenario, in order to attract more supporters both in the upcoming presidential and in the next or early parliamentary elections. Therefore, it seems that no serious internal crisis is to happen in the foreseeable PDM future, and it will continue to successfully maneuver between the left and right trying to "fishing out the best in troubled waters."