Splitting Simulation? What's Happening to the Moldovan Ruling Coalition

The Democratic Party leadership keeps every possible way demonstrating dissatisfaction with their coalition partners while increasingly flirting with the pro-European opposition. But are the democrats really ready to refuse cooperating with the PSRM? Vladimir ROTAR, RTA: The further presidential campaign unfolds, the more confusing its plot becomes. Recently, the media and public attention focus shifted towards voting on the left bank and especially towards the foreign diaspora. As expected, authorities want to dramatically increase (by 3 times at once) the number of polling stations outside the country, including in the Russian Federation. This caused opposition’s expected discontent and a new flurry of accusations of electoral fraud attempts. The opponents of the authorities did not like the results of online registration abroad: the data from Russia seemed to them too high. The US and the EU have already expressed concern about manipulations within residents of the left bank and the diaspora voting. Against the background of the presidential race twisting, the contradictions in the camp of the ruling "minority" are not so noticeable. The partnership between socialists and democrats has never been cloudless and now it leaves much to be desired. As the honorary chairman of the Democratic Party, Dumitru Diacov admitted, a number of executive bureau’s members want the formation to leave the ruling coalition. In addition, according to him, there are people in the PDM who sympathize with both Dodon and Sandu and the party (after the first round) might sign an agreement to support a certain candidate at the second stage of voting. And that candidate will not necessarily be the de facto Socialist allies’ leader. So confirm the open contacts between Igor Dodon's main rival in the elections, Maia Sandu and the leader of the Democratic Party, Pavel Filip who do not even try to hide both sides. The PAS chairman explains meeting with Filip as attempts to "build bridges" before the second round of elections, counting on the Democrats confirming their status as a pro-European party. In addition to negotiations with the pro-European opposition, Filip sharply criticizes the idea of Ion Chicu government resigning, calling it irresponsible in the current situation. The fall of Chicu’s Cabinet of Ministers over recent weeks has turned from a hypothetical scenario into a very real option that the president's entourage can activate as a kind of Plan B. Dumitru Diacov confirmed the fact that behind the scenes there is an intensive discussion on government resignation, and admitted that he had already heard about several scenarios for this idea implementation. It is quite understandable that the idea of resignation under the cabinet of ministers “control” keeps the Democrats in suspense to a certain extent, and for several reasons at once. First, they hardly like the very option of the incumbent president taking the prime minister's seat because as you know, in accordance with the existing coalition agreement between the PDM and the PSRM, the post of prime minister after the presidential elections should have been given to the PDM representative. In addition, reconfiguring ministerial portfolios is unlikely to take place at current proportions. The balance in the coalition has dramatically changed in recent months. Igor Dodon also pointed to this, saying that when the coalition was formed, the Democrats possessed 23 deputy seats and according to that number, portfolios and powers were divided. Now, among the socialists, who now surpass the PDM faction by almost four times (37 mandates in hand and three more independent parliamentarians against 11 deputies in the Democratic Party), there are many who want to redistribute the power pie in a fairer and more appropriate way. Against this background, the PDM's negotiations with the pro-European opposition seem quite logical from the point of view of preparing the party for its future existence after the presidential elections. Despite the fact that PDM does not have many mandates in parliament, their main advantage over their coalition partners is that the socialists need democrats more than vice versa. Anyway, the PDM still disposes of a sufficient number of possible options: for example, cooperation with the rightists, or even reunification with the Candu split group, although the latter will obviously require a reshuffle in the party leadership. However, it seems that all the publicly shown discontent and negotiations with the opposition are nothing more than a Democratic Party’s defense mechanism designed to maintain existing positions within the ruling coalition. In fact, the Democrats do not have many real reasons to support and much more start cooperating with pro-European forces and Maia Sandu in particular. The latter's coming to power will inevitably threaten the democrats both from the point of view of their financial well-being (secured by a solid set of plum jobs and feeds) and in principle, preservation in parliament. After all, Sandu is a consistent supporter of early parliamentary elections organization, to which the European curators are encouraging her and it is hardly likely the PDM will cross the electoral threshold for them. Therefore, the current flirtation with country's leadership opponents is nothing more than a PDM’s tactical move aimed at strengthening its own positions in the coalition and at forcing partners to reckon with their opinions and visions of further domestic political steps. Moreover, it has already been successfully tested earlier. In this sense, it is appropriate recalling this year’s February-March situation when the Democrats demonstratively went to approach with the ACUM bloc, preparing various joint declarations and discussing the government resignation, only to subsequently, in two weeks, formalize a coalition with the socialists receiving the maximum ministerial portfolios and other key posts within the Moldovan authorities.