Expert: Regime May Lose Its Supervisors

Anton ŠVEC

Three years of PAS’ agonizing rule have proved the utter ineptitude of the present regime. Meanwhile, the Western curators are plunging deeper and deeper into their own problems

The authorities and the opposition summed up the disappointing results of the three-year rule of PAS. The current socio-economic situation in the country is close to critical, when investments are at zero, the national debt is growing catastrophically, the budget is in deficit, GDP and the economy are stagnating. The cost of living for the general population has increased significantly, the natural result of which is a rapidly deepening demographic gap. The government is unable and does not try to do anything to reverse the negative trend, to achieve growth and fair distribution of public goods. The holes in the budget are patched at the expense of selling state property for a song, foreign loans, and aggressive tax and customs measures in the regions. Only a part of the bureaucratic class, experts on Western grants, and diasporas in the EU countries, who simply do not understand the real state of affairs at home, are satisfied with the current regime. At the same time, government functionaries are regularly caught up in scandals and lose touch with reality, flaunting the country’s subjective achievements in the foreign arena, i.e. negotiations on accession to the European Union and integration with NATO. International relations are the only thing that the PAS regime and personally Maia Sandu continue to take credit for, ignoring the fact that rapprochement with the Western community has a very concrete price – the destruction of traditional ties in the CIS and, consequently, the crisis in relations with Moscow, Comrat and Tiraspol, which is not supported by a significant part of the population and producers. There is a paradoxical situation when the government boasts that it has no power, and the development of Moldovan territory with the transfer of sovereignty to various Western capitals is proceeding at an accelerated pace. By and large, the transfer of powers from the comprador elite to the notional “colonial administration” is quite an adequate model of Moldova’s political future, partly copying, for example, the Baltic case. The problem is that Western centers of power are preoccupied with their own issues and are losing the ability to effectively manage peripheral territories. In France, which has become one of Moldova’s main partners in recent years, President Emmanuel Macron, at breaking point, did not let the right-wing parties come to power. However, firstly, he turned into a political outsider, and secondly, he “dragged” into parliament a motley coalition of left-wing blocs, partly opposing the establishment, and partly opposing the principles that for many years determined the economic, political and cultural successes of Paris. France is so fragmented that it cannot adequately control even its overseas territories and regularly faces critical problems in African countries where it has enjoyed a privileged position for more than a century since colonial rule. Under such conditions, it is difficult to expect Paris to remain the locomotive of the European Union and a driver of its reform, let alone to manage the border territories in a phase of widespread military aggravation. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump with random victims among his supporters is not only a reflection of current catastrophic trends (only two months passed after the attack on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico), but also a “black swan” for Washington. The Democrats, who found themselves in a quandary after President Joseph Biden’s failure at the first televised debate, are now almost deprived of any conventional tools for success in the election campaign. The victory of the Republican candidate today seems to be virtually a done deal. The problem is that the so-called “deep state” is not ready to accept defeat and another four years of Donald Trump’s administration. The establishment will use by any available methods to fight against him, which, given the polarization of American society along a whole spectrum of fault lines (rich-poor, conventional natives - migrants, traditionalists - liberals) forms stable preconditions for civil war and, at the very least, “turning inwards” to solve their own problems or dragging the whole world into a “great war” or a global economic recession. In this case such tactical steps as determining the new composition of the U.S. Embassy in Chisinau may be rather insufficient. And without reliance on Washington, the current Moldovan leaders and the expert class will find themselves in political confusion and without extra income that determines their general satisfaction with the situation in the country. Of course, Chisinau is ready to rely on its neighbors, but Kyiv is at war, and not quite successfully in recent months. The new ambassador to Moldova appointed by Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, is not particularly focused on establishing diplomatic contacts; his task is to make sure that military and other transit to Ukraine passes Moldova unhindered, to stop evaders from fleeing across the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, including the Transnistrian section, and to guarantee the political loyalty and combat readiness of the Moldovan elites. There are certain technical delays in the European Union related to the replacement of the main governing bodies after the elections and, in particular, to Hungary’s EU presidency. Viktor Orban’s opposition disrupts the integrity of the Union’s foreign policy and leads to internal confrontation – for example, the European Commission is now trying to derail an informal meeting of foreign ministers in Budapest initiated by the Hungarian prime minister. Romania remains an important ally, but it’s not all as easy as it sounds. Firstly, parliamentary elections will be held there in four and a half months, which will be accompanied by a complicated procedure of distribution of posts, up to and including the collapse of the ruling coalition of national liberals and social democrats. Secondly, Bucharest has never supported any particular political regime in Moldova, acting cautiously and prospectively. Ties remain with unionists like Mihai Ghimpu, Ion Ceban’s MAN party, Vlad Filat’s Liberal Democrats, and Ion Sula’s European Social Democratic Party (the former Democrats even have a cooperation agreement with the Romanian Social Democratic Party). Therefore, Bucharest will not save the PAS regime, given the fact that it will retain its dominant influence in almost any political situation in Chisinau. Besides, cooperation-convergence with Romania also has its price - the inevitability of “unirea”, at least de facto, in case of critical trends in Moldovan politics and/or economy. All these internal peculiarities in Moldova’s partner countries would not matter much if we had a competent government in power, oriented towards national interests and capable of ruling. However, this is absolutely not the case. Therefore, the crisis of the PAS regime, based solely on external loyalty, in circumstances of major transformations with foreign supervisors can lead to a situation of power vacuum in the republic. In a good scenario, this will entail the need to restart the state on the basis of genuine people’s power, democratic principles, legitimacy and the priority of the economy and human rights. A bad scenario, which cannot be excluded given the actions of PAS in recent years, would mean revolutionary events with the danger of disintegration and disassembly of Moldova.