Opinion: Moldovan Society Is Still Being Deeply Divided

Vladimir ROTAR Presidential elections overshadowed the unhealthy processes in the Moldovan society; a society that is being increasingly fragmented into first, second and even third class citizens. The last Sunday voting brought up unexpected results: despite practically all sociological polls and studies, the leader of the pro-European opposition, Maia Sandu, won the first round. Now, together with the current head of state Igor Dodon, she is to compete in the second round of presidency battle. Both finalists made public comments yesterday on the election results. Maia Sandu announced " the people’s victory ", noting that more than 2/3 of citizens "voted for change." Despite the success, the chairman of the Action and Solidarity Party continued to bend her line on numerous violations, in particular, reporting that the police filed more than 300 relevant complaints. “Give up falsifications, don't try to blackmail people. Don't put pressure on state employees. You better analyze hundreds of complaints from us. Leave people alone,” the politician said. In turn, Igor Dodon congratulated his main rival and expressed hope that population additionally mobilizes in the second round. He also lashed out at his opponents for accusations of voting fraud. “The way the elections were held yesterday is the answer to those who talked about falsifications. I would like to appeal to former and current presidential candidates: you should apologize to government agencies and citizens for the lies that you have been promoting for the past two weeks. About falsifications and much more. Are you satisfied with the result now? Don't you talk about falsifications anymore? " - Dodon said, stressing that the country's leadership has proven it can hold free and democratic elections. PAS leader is undoubtedly the de jure winner of the first round but in a certain sense, both Maia Sandu and Igor Dodon lost on Sunday. Just look at the numbers. Firstly, both favorites have significantly "lost" in votes if compared with 2016 results: Sandu by 61.5 thousand, and Dodon - by 240 thousand at once. Secondly, their total result, even as a percentage, has significantly decreased: from 86.7% for both of them in 2016 to 68.7% now. Four years ago, they were the absolute favorites of the race, while the third place competitor Dumitru Ciubasenco, barely exceeded 6% of the vote. Now two people have taken this bar at once: Violeta Ivanov and Renato Usatii, the latter gained almost 17%. This means that almost a quarter of those who voted preferred the "respectable" Maia Sandu and the incumbent president to the populist politician with a train of criminal cases in Russia and a representative of the party belonging to the oligarch involved in the billion theft. As a final chord, the population’s turnout has significantly dropped and that in fact, is quite consistent with the boring presidential campaign, where both key contenders were unable offering absolutely nothing new. Even their programs, in fact do not quite differ, sometimes in details maybe. The 2016 favorites composition that has survived since, played a role as well, it did not dispose going to the polling stations anyway (well, the "new faces" factor should not be underestimated either - as more than two hundred thousand votes for Usatii evidenced). At the same time - and this does not surprise anyone at all - voting, as always turned into a primitive choice between the West and the East: the voter gave once again preference not to a candidate with a more realistic and promising program for the country's development but to a candidate who preaches a more “attractive” foreign policy vector. Along with, the geopolitical split as can be seen, has only worsened over recent years, being supplemented by new facets and dimensions. Here, first of all we are talking about diaspora and residents of the left bank voting. There was especially a lot of noise about the latter: the opposition dispersed the topic of organized Transdniestrian voters’ transportation and some not very responsible politicians even announced strong guys gathering to “defend the Moldovan elections”. As a result, there were a lot of incidents with blocking highways, polling stations, speeches of combatants, psychological pressure on individual voters and other actions that violate Moldovan legislation on election day. Taking into account the fact that this entire performance was prepared in advance and with a loud media announcement, one should not be surprised at the low left bank turnout that amounted to less than 15 thousand people. Therefore, despite the opposition’s regularly voiced publicly fears, the citizens of Moldova living on the territory of the left bank did not become a decisive factor in the voting. The one to became was the diaspora, primarily in the Western countries. It was our citizens’ living abroad unexpectedly high mobilization (hopefully, temporarily), that became the main guarantee of a relatively confident victory of Maia Sandu over Igor Dodon. Unlike the turnout in the country, which in Moldova itself declined almost everywhere, there was no overcrowding at foreign polling stations and the total number of voters there exceeded even the figures of the second round of the 2016 elections. An astounding fact, with probably few analogues in modern world electoral practice is that more than 10% of the votes cast in these elections belong to people who do not now live on Moldovan territory. And it was them to decide the fate of the first round (and, possibly, the entire presidential race). Naturally, this could not but heat up the controversy in society over how fair is the fact that Moldova’s future is actually being determined by those who do not live in. The incumbent president added some oil to this discussion as well. Obviously, upset by the fact that the voting of citizens abroad actually "stole" his guaranteed victory (only 4% of almost 150 thousand representatives of the diaspora voted for Dodon, while Sandu got 70%), the head of state casually called the diaspora a "parallel electorate”, whose “political preferences do not coincide with preferences of the majority of citizens living in Moldova”. The president's disappointment is understandable, anyway it is difficult justifying such his statements, since they would further only keep dividing citizens of the republic, harbor hatred of those who (in a twist of fate) are forced to live and work far from their homeland - and its powerful surge could have been observed quite recently, during the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The real attitude of authorities towards our labor migrants could be seen in the example of how poorly organized voting abroad was: often people had to stand in a long queue while not the best weather conditions, to reach the polling stations. And instead of gratitude to politicians for their high civic consciousness, what they now receive is only reproaches, veiled insults and a new wave of hate from almost half of the country's population. On the whole, more or less the same process of “population’s categorization” can be observed in relation to the residents of the left bank, because the spiral of alienation and intolerance towards wthem has been unfolding over the last weeks before the vote. The decline of citizens' confidence for colorless candidates, the lack of clear hopes for the future, the usual geopolitical split supplemented by the growing society disunity which is increasingly divided into: citizens of the first, second and even third class - all these are problems that corrode the already fragile Moldovan statehood. One cannot speak of either reintegration or real unity of the country until they are solved, thus it is impossible imagining a stable Moldova’s development if not solving them. And the deeper this split, the more convenient it is used by dishonest politicians since for many of them - the worse the situation, the better.