Presidential Election in an Uneven Playing Field

Anton ŠVEC

The parliamentary majority, the control of the executive branch, the judiciary and especially the CEC allow the regime to use a wide range of manipulative tools to compensate for the large anti-rating of the incumbent president and PAS

For several months, Maia Sandu’s team has been actively campaigning, ignoring the legislation. Administrative levers are used to mobilize the electorate in the districts, including capabilities of local elected representatives from competing political projects such as the European Social Democratic Party, affiliated with oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc. The government does not hesitate to contact with those it has previously formally fought against, distribute advertising and propaganda products, constantly accompanying the campaign with protocol events involving Maia Sandu and foreign or popular local personalities. Multimillion-dollar budget expenditures to improve the incumbent president’s rating through concerts, marathons and other festive events look extremely dubious amid problems in agriculture, transport, energy and the inability to maintain municipal infrastructure. But no one in the president’s office seems to care about this. At the same time, the PAS regime, through the controlled courts and the CEC, prevents the registration of individual presidential candidates and hinders electoral competitors. Projects somehow related to Ilan Sor, as well as Vladimir Filat, are excluded from the political process. The media actively criticize or refuse to give a platform to a number of other politicians who have declared their intention to run, do not want to hold pre-election debates. Without equal access to telecommunication resources, Irina Vlah, Alexandr Stoianoglo and Ion Chicu, relatively dangerous for Sandu, cannot increase their visibility and convey their electoral programme to voters nationwide. The ban of numerous TV channels and websites allegedly supervised by Moscow or Ilan Sor deprives promising candidates of alternative platforms. The idea of holding a referendum on 20 October has stumped Chisinau Mayor Ion Ceban and his MAN party. Over the weekend he announced the registration of his platform as a plebiscite participant and own intention to campaign in favor of constitutional amendments formalizing Moldova’s European integration vector. Given his refusal to run for president, clearly forced, Maia Sandu may well expect at least some of Ceban’s supporters to back her as the initiator of “European changes” to the basic law. The decision of the capital’s mayor, with an eye, first and foremost, on becoming a full-fledged member of the central government following the March parliamentary elections, may play a cruel joke both on the MAN party, which risks losing its own political identity and becoming an appendage of the regime, and on society as a whole. He is essentially being deprived of his last opportunity to get rid of the incompetent and authoritarian rule of Sandu and her nominees. Last weekend showed yet another example of the PAS party using administrative resources in an election campaign that has not formally started. The CEC, which has long been directly controlled by the president’s office, announced the number of polling stations to be opened abroad. Despite the fact that the Russian Federation has the largest number of citizens who registered to vote in advance, the commission will organize elections in only four Russian cities: two polling stations will be opened in Moscow, one in St Petersburg, Yaroslavl and Surgut (Khanty-Mansiysk). Our citizens will also have opportunity to exercise their right to vote at one polling station in the capital of Belarus. Just to compare, 60 polling stations will open in Italy, 26 in Germany, 20 in France, 17 in the United Kingdom, 16 each in Romania and the United States, and 11 in Spain. More polling places will be available even in Ireland (10) and Canada (6). We can say, of course, that the number of our labor migrants in Russia has significantly decreased over the last 5-7 years, and this is indeed true. But at the same time, even the official data of the Moldovan services show that there are 4-5 times more of them than in many of the countries listed above. The CEC tried to justify itself with security issues: threats to voters and “ongoing military operations”. For example, the CEC fears drone attacks on places of mass gatherings of citizens (to be fair, in warring Ukraine and Israel, there will indeed be only 2 stations working each - on the territories of Moldovan diplomatic institutions). However, even so, the political background in the decision taken by the CEC is obvious. The PAS regime is once again, through a state body under its control, minimizing the risks of the influence of the “wrong vote” in Russia and Belarus on the prospects of Maia Sandu and the referendum she is promoting. The reduction in the number of polling stations open to Transnistrian residents should be construed in the same way. At the last presidential elections in 2020, there were 41 such polling stations, while now there are only 30 (all on the territory controlled by the constitutional authorities). This will make life much easier for those politicians and activists who, inspired by Igor Grosu’s experience, will want to prevent Transnistrian voters from participating in the elections. Chisinau has already repeatedly stipulated that since it is impossible to campaign on Transnistrian territory and there are no Moldovan TV channels and mass media, the voting of Transnistrian citizens, whose number, according to the authorities’ calculations, is steadily growing, will obviously be wrong. At the same time, the ruling regime, exploiting tools not available in truly democratic societies, continues its electoral campaign in an attempt to keep its patron in power by any means. It is difficult to predict how the voters will react to these manipulations, but the rise in anti-rating of the president and PAS tops may hint that not all tricks are effective.