Opinion: Recean and His Government Are Dragging Sandu’s Ratings Down

The acting government’s unpopularity has reached its peak: the vast majority of the population disapproves of its activity, with the premier having the worst anti-rating in the country

Semyon ALBU, RTA: The government of Dorin Recean has been working for almost a year and a half now. Well, not working but rather functioning. The fact is that the meetings of the ministerial cohort are held, but people have not seen any positive results in eighteen months. On the contrary, in many respects things have become even worse than in February 2023. In fact, it was initially quite strange to expect any labor feats from Recean. Let me remind you of the setting in which his appointment took place. The war in Ukraine had already been going on for a year, and the regional situation around Moldova was extremely tense. Things inside the country were also not good – the government of Natalia Gavrilita had totally failed to meet expectations of the citizens, plunging the country into a whole bunch of crises – energy, economic, etc. Against this background, the party in power began to fracture. And then Gavrilita was quickly dismissed to appoint Recean. To be exact, that was the instruction of the Western embassies, whose protégé the new prime minister was and still is. This is perhaps the reason why he has never become one of the PAS club or joined the ruling party, despite his desire to do so, and was forced to share power with Andrei Spinu, who is formally his subordinate but in fact a “parallel prime minister”. In any case, the degree of public discontent was reduced, giving respite to the authorities. It was not only for this reason that the former minister of interior was seated in the government chair, his list of priorities was quite clear. First, to consolidate the position of the Sandu regime and the PAS as much as possible, including ceasing internal unrest. Secondly, to proceed with a policy of all-round support to the warring Ukraine while working towards the militarization of Moldova itself. And thirdly, European integration, of course. Actually, he pulled it off. Is the regime on track? It is. The mono-majority has not split even into sub-fractions, at least publicly, and the tame parliament, with rare exceptions, still obediently votes on all initiatives of the authorities ignoring those of the opposition. We help Kyiv as much as we can – politically, diplomatically, and with the transit of goods. The militarization issue is clear enough, it was discussed many times. True, the path to Europe is a bit contradictory. On the one hand, we obtained all the approvals to open negotiations, but this is certainly not to the government’s credit. On the other hand, reforms are not going well, and Recean has no choice but to go on the air and travel around the villages building castles about the coming “European-style renovation” of the country. But, as you realize, all of the above are very narrow, opportunistic (geo)political tasks, the solution of which does not make the life of an average citizen better or more prosperous. Except for ministers, perhaps – whom we consider ordinary people, don’t we? – who have had their salaries doubled. People are well aware of this, and the performance of the current government is negatively assessed by the vast majority of respondents. That is why it has long been in a precarious position, with experts predicting its dismissal every month or two. But despite the regular ministerial replacements, the government is still afloat, largely thanks to the influence of key embassies that do not want to swap horses in midstream. Recean himself also failed to win the sympathy of the population. Attempts to create an image of a “tough leader who is close to ordinary people” and a “strongman” turned out to be awkward and sometimes ludicrous. When he first reached out to the people, he wished Moldovans “to be less nagging”, after which he was not allowed to talk to citizens for a while. Now his trips across the country continue, but look cringe-like, as it is fashionable to say, in the spirit of some Soviet-era propaganda. Aggressive campaigns in social networks yielded nothing. Both the government and Recean personally spent thousands of euros on promoting posts on Facebook, for example, about the success of the European Village program, second only to Platon and Šor in terms of advertising budgets. The prime minister claimed that he was sponsoring the promotion allegedly only from his own pocket. But, apparently, it was money to the wind – people firmly dislike the chairman of the government. To the extent that he has the highest anti-rating among major Moldovan politicians – more than 58%, surpassing even Maia Sandu. Of course, an extremely ineffective government staffed with personalities like Alaiba is a big trouble for us. But it’s actually a problem also for Sandu and the ruling party, who will go to the polls in turns. All the more so because the extremely unpopular Prime Minister, with no success stories but plenty of failures, keeps being caught up in nasty scandals. Thus, recently, Recean further spoiled his already lame image by welcoming an analog of the infamous Ukrainian site Peacemaker in our Internet space, which publishes personal data of “enemies of the people”, without their permission, of course. The Moldovan version of the site has already featured such opposition politicians and journalists as Alexandr Stoianoglo, Dumitru Ciubasenco and Irina Vlah, apart from Sor and Guţul. All in all, 25 persons. The case is pernicious in terms of democratic standards, but the prime minister took it as “an initiative to inform citizens properly”. Apparently, he did not know that the Ukrainian Peacemaker was officially criticized by both the EU and the USA. The government’s press service had to settle such a huge mess stating that it hadn’t been involved in the development of the site and that the situation should be treated “with humor”. Should we have a similar attitude to the cases when Recean, for example, openly threatens justice officials? Frankly speaking, the current Cabinet and Dorin Recean as a “cherry on top of it” are a big anchor for the same Madam President, which drags her ratings down even more. It is more than obvious that the premier has already been sidelined, so that he would not annoy everyone or provoke another scandal with improper words. Yet, this is not enough, and ideally, to improve her chances in October, Sandu would better get rid of the repeatedly malfunctioning government. This is a toxic liability right now.