False, Empty and Primitive - That’s What Sandu Is All About

The President’s interview given to Yury Dud was a successful media trick, but it showed again and in a rather clear manner the appalling detachment from reality and the backwardness of the person who holds the highest office in the country

Semyon ALBU, RTA: The interview with Russian blogger Yury Dud was certainly one of the most high-profile media appearances of Maia Sandu in a long time, and maybe even at all. It should be said that the cooperation turned out to be mutually beneficial for both parties - Dud, who after leaving Russia has to get by mostly with almost “no-names”, found a huge profit in the form of a whole head of a state, albeit small. The president got access to a wide Russian-speaking audience, which is important, and also, due to the popularity of the interviewer, a guaranteed high quotability of her words and hype. Already in the first day after its release, the video was watched by millions of people, quickly reaching the top of YouTube trends. Like it or not, the result is impressive. I don’t know whether the topics of the interview were discussed in advance - I think they were. But be that as it may, Sandu’s entourage wanted to achieve a number of understandable goals with this interview. The first one is to appeal to the Russian-speaking population of Moldova, which, at least in the past, watched Dud en masse. It is clear that an interview with Sandu would have aroused their interest in any case, at least in terms of seeing how the president would handle the “roast” from a famous blogger. The second is to raise acute topics, showing that she does not run away from uncomfortable questions and is able to give an official position on them first hand. After the case of the Canal 5 journalist, this was especially important. The third task was to show Sandu as a simple, sensitive and decent person and a strong leader through a series of so-called “flattering” questions, which is already doubtful for most of our citizens. For instance, the question about whether she would flee from Moldova in case of an attack, to which an obvious answer followed, showing her courage and willpower. And all these tricks from the book about the “political PR for beginners”: about living in a small flat flooded by neighbors, not in a residence, in order to save budget money, about lunches from her mother, about the small salary on which she lives. Strangely, there was no mention of getting to work by public transport or bicycle. The only shadow of sincerity in her speech seems to be the declarations of love for walking, especially while abroad. It is really easy to believe that Sandu is happy to stroll in Brussels rather than among her own population. In general, unpretentious crowd liked the interview - Sandu appeared to them as a courageous reformist leader guiding the “lagging Moldova” to a bright future. However, a simple content analysis reveals an appalling detachment from reality and backwardness of the person who occupies the highest post in the country – if not in terms of authority, then in terms of status. Apart from the “hiking”, none of the topics aroused genuine emotions of the head of state. All her answers were based on three axes - slogans, excuses and outright lies, and therefore sounded blatantly formulaic, meaningless and often false. As for slogans, they were standard: European integration and the fight against corruption together with the justice reform are topmost. Why nothing has worked out, except the bonuses from the EU, is also clear. Maia Sandu has no “undertones”: without batting an eye, she characterized the whole history of Moldova before PAS as “dark ages”, where corrupt officials did nothing but plundered the country. The sad results of the three-year undivided rule of her party and her own four-year presidency are thus explained only by poor efforts of the previous governments and by external circumstances. The only failure, according to Sandu, is underestimating the resistance of past regimes to so-called “reforms”. We have to admit that Yury Dud didn’t shy away from discussing acute topics with Sandu, without mere obedient nodding to what she said. For example, he tried to force her to admit whether democracy can be built by non-democratic methods. At such moments, she would get completely confused, producing memorized phrases, which mostly were lies. In general, there were too much outright lies during the interview. And even in small things. For example, the president did not hesitate to state that her pre-election promise to tear down the fence at the President’s Office had been fulfilled in response to Dud’s direct remark that this had not been done. According to her, the gate was open, so everything is OK, since removing the entire fence is allegedly very expensive. Apparently, it is much more expensive than erecting a new building worth tens of millions of euros for the public company Teleradio-Moldova, which has been seized by the authorities and turned into a propaganda tool. She was not at ease when discussing the justice reform, choosing to ignore all the excesses, violations and strange adaptations of laws, scandalous appointment procedures, mass resignations of the system’s employees, and the conflict around the Vetting Commission now headed by a Dutch expert involved in corruption schemes in his home country. Dud did not go that far, although he cited an unflattering assessment of the reform by Carnegie Foundation experts who acknowledged the incompetence of the Moldovan authorities. Of course, there were a lot of lies about freedom of speech in Moldova. She retorted all accusations with international ratings, which allegedly show Moldova’s growth in this indicator. She refused to call the closure of more than a dozen TV channels and a bunch of other media outlets as censorship because they allegedly “violated the law”. Which is not true, of course, because there was no court decision, and the revocation of licensees after the end of the state of emergency was carried out by an obscure agency – the investment council. At the same time Sandu said that many channels criticize the authorities but they run smoothly and even promised to provide a concrete list of them later. Ironically, just on the day the interview was released, three of them were under threat of license revocation, together with four more TV channels and two radio stations. In general, the president was extremely unconvincing on media issues, which was rather expected. Even the most hard boiled politician could not justify such brutal and brazen lawlessness. She also lied about Dodon’s detention on her birthday, which she allegedly did not know about because she was not in the country. She was lucky that the blogger did not pay attention to the strange tradition of the Moldovan president’s foreign trips on days when acts of lawlessness are committed. Of which she is well aware, and many of which she probably authorizes. Her replies about the non-appointment of Evghenia Gutul as a member of the government contrary to the law sounded ridiculous. The phrases “I do not think such people can be in the government”, “I do not think this violates the law”, “I cannot appoint a person representing a criminal corrupt group in the government” reflect well the ideology of this person. Her own opinions and assessments are above the legal norms, and their violation is permissible if “it is common knowledge that the person who suffered from the regime’s misdeeds is a corrupt person”. This is the main narrative that runs through the entire interview, both when it comes to Marina Tauber’s withdrawal from the elections in Balti and the energy sector. By the way, the president is lying again, saying that the goal of her regime’s policy is to achieve “better prices for electricity and gas”, because it was the break with Gazprom and the attempts to withdraw from the contract with MoldGRES that raised the tariffs for energy resources and cost Moldova colossal sums, leading to economic stagnation and ruin of consumers. It was not that easy for Sandu to argue with Dud that the referendum she announced was nothing more than a political-technological trick, although she cited the noble motive of increasing turnout. And that the postal vote, which “coincidentally” will be selectively held only in countries with diasporas loyal to Sandu (and not, for example, in Russia), looks unfair and violates the rights of Moldovans from Russia. The funniest thing is that Sandu directly said that even if the referendum fails, European integration will not stop. That is, once again we see that her personal attitudes prevail not just over the law, but even over the popular opinion. Are you sure this isn’t a dictatorship? A few thoughts and conclusions from this interview. Firstly, it is the pure cynicism to bring up Russian-speaking people just before an election in order to gather the electorate and then forget about them again for the next four years. It’s as if everyone forgot about a similar trick in 2020. You, Maia, has not become president for everyone as you promised, and, certainly, you will never become in the future, no matter how much you convince us of that now. Secondly, the head of state cannot say and offer anything new, voicing the same disgusting slogans from 2020, under which, as we have already seen, there is nothing. And the very “dark ages”, which Sandu recalled, with her coming to power not only stayed, but became even darker. Good people turned out to be as corrupt timeservers and hustlers as their predecessors, devoid of conscience and statesmanship. The fight against corruption turned into its mastering, the cleansing of state institutions into capture, democracy into censorship, tampering and tinkering with legislation to suit their own immediate interests. All these aspects were clearly visible in the interview, and there were no substantive answers to them. As there could not be any. At the same time, Dud, for all the seemingly tricky questions he asked, frankly speaking, didn’t dig deep, ignoring, either on purpose or out of ignorance, a number of topics that were no less, if not more unflattering. There were no questions about PAS corruption schemes, about the clans within the ruling party who are busy with never-ending carve-up of the “Moldovan pie”, about the scandalous tender at the airport with a pre-arranged winner, about Andrei Spinu and nepotism in the government. The militarization of the country was only briefly touched upon, and Dud himself helped to justify it with a scathing quote by Popsoi comparing it to the Real Madrid defense. The Transnistrian issue was almost ignored, although in recent months it appeared in news feeds. And it is also strange that they did not discuss Sandu’s bribe in the form of a prize in Romania, which she was forced to give to charity only after the scandal broke out. Nevertheless, even that minimum was enough to highlight once again – this time rather explicitly, since the interview lasted two hours – the complete ideological and substantive hollowness of a president who, apart from slogans and lies to justify the lawlessness of her regime, is incapable of doing anything. Is this really the kind of president we want for the next four years? By the way, to keep blaming everything on the predecessors in the third year of sole rule is a complete nonsense.