Moldovan Democracy Annihilated in Balti

The country is slowly returning to the state of a captured state, only this time – under the “right” banners

Semion ALBU, RTA: The ruling party has a huge talent for making problems out of nothing. Where it was necessary to use on their heads in advance and sign a contract without haste and excitement, they waited till the last minute and got an energy crisis with millions of losses and a greatly increased gas price. Where it was necessary to hold the most ordinary elections, they put on a show that eventually turned into one of the biggest blemish in the history of the republic’s electoral processes. That’s right, it’s the Balti elections again. Last Sunday, this epic finally ended, and exactly as it should have after all the gross abuse of the process by the ruling party. It is even interesting what the Yellow and personally Mrs. President feel now when they look post factum at the results of their work in the “northern capital”. After all, this story has already picked up such a scandalous trail that PAS will have it coming back to them for a very long time. As we know, amidst the scandal with Tauber’s removal, the official candidate from the ruling party hastened to withdraw from the elections – either felt guilty, or they decided not to disgrace the victorious image of PAS with another defeat. The PSRM, which could count on success in the wake of the protest vote, to its credit, decided not to get dirty in the obviously illegitimate elections and recalled its representative as well. As a result, a “political heavyweight” Nicolae Chirilciuc stepped up against the silver medalist of the first round, who then took fifth place with a result of as much as 1.25%. Now, a few facts about the so-called “second round”, which really can’t be called such after all that has happened. The residents of Balti, whose choice the authorities brazenly trampled, reacted predictably – they simply ignored the vote. The turnout dropped more than threefold, not even reaching ten percent. Moreover, almost a fifth of those who still came to the polling stations preferred to spoil the ballots, thereby clearly expressing their opinion on what was happening. And this is taking into account the fact that, according to some reports, the authorities began to actively involve the administrative resource and send state employees to avoid complete disgrace. It didn't work. As a result, in these hothouse conditions Grigorisin naturally became the mayor of the 150-thousandth city, having been elected by only a little more than seven thousand citizens. It’s three times less in absolute numbers than Marina Tauber scored in the first round, where, by the way, she fought several strong rivals at once, and not the “one-percent” Chirilciuc. However, the newly-made mayor called his victory “landslide”, and then gave an enchanting interview with NewsMaker, in which it is not really clear whether a person is completely detached from reality or politically cynical. If we look one-sidedly, primitively and “no further than your nose” at the results of the Balti case – and, apparently, that is what the presidential party does – this is definitely a victory. Yes, their own candidate lost, but they did not let Sor get another strong point, especially when it’s the second largest city in the country. In addition, the new mayor, and this is already aт open secret, is quite cooperative and convenient for PAS, without having his own weight, contrary to the same Renato Usatii or potentially Tauber. There are no weak party structures under their belts, while Grigorisin, to put it bluntly, is an ordinary apparatchik, having no serious force. If we look at it from the point of view of long-term political prospects, it’s a defeat. It is extremely unlikely that the Sor MPs would have been able to repeat the Orhei success. Here it would be necessary to operate on a completely different scale – after all, the Balti population is more than seven times larger, and accordingly the number of problems and the amount of resources spent on solving them are incomparable. Therefore, it is not a fact that even Ilan Sor would have enough money for a new “success story”, especially if the authorities still began to really fight corruption and schemes, knocking out the “pillow of money” in the process. And in such a scenario, it would become clear that this whole party is a hype, and can offer nothing but parks built for stolen money of sheer populism. Instead, now an environment of undeservedly regime victims and fighters against “bad government” is forming around it, and this is always a really good background for further political take-off, especially when the republic leadership collapses. Finally, if we look from the point of view of elementary democracy and the principles of the rule of law, then everything that happened in Balti is a complete disaster. It can even be recorded that we no longer have democracy, and there’s even precise time of its death – namely, the moment when Tauber was excluded from the race under a fabricated pretext. We have not seen such a violation of the institution of elections since the days of Plahotniuc. Thus, less than six months have passed, and the ruling, kind of “pro-European” party, dearly loved by the West partners, has already lowered itself to the same level with both Plahotniuc and Sor – they stole elections and a billion, these have only stolen elections so far. But there’s always more to come. Two main conclusions can be drawn from this story. First, PAS is not ready to concede or share power, not being afraid to protect its sole rule even by “annihilating” one of the democratic pillars. We were practically denied the right to make our own choice, because if the ruling party does not like it, it can be simply canceled. Second, an authoritarian regime is being developed in the country, which throws us back to the situation of two or three years ago, where the owners of the republic had handheld courts, prosecutor's office, SIS, MIA, CEC, etc. Not to say that the ruling party has already achieved this level of control, but the successes along this path are obvious. At least, they managed to carry out fairly smoothly Tauber’s removal with the help of the courts and the CEC, and in the latter the president’s henchman did practically everything. This is only the first stop in a long route and the final one is the reconstruction of the captured state, only under the right banners. To do this, among other things, they will burn out the political field, removing potentially strong competitors through controlled courts and supervisory authorities. It can be assumed that one of the first victims will be the Sor party, the demolition of which, at least, will look good for Western partners and part of the population. Another predictable target is the Socialist Party. Today, for example, it became known that honorary PSRM chairman Igor Dodon was summoned for questioning to the Prosecutor General’s Office – the same one where Alexandr Stoianoglo was illegally suspended and an “insider” was put to prepare the body for political purges. And now we see the first fruits. The only consolation in such a situation is the absolute incompetence of the “Yellow team”, which fails almost every task it undertakes. Let’s hope that by carrying out its repressions, PAS will achieve the opposite effect – not prolonging, but on shortening their term of rule.