Opinion: Bucharest Is Where Maia Sandu and Ion Ceban’s Political Priorities Overlap

Christian RUSSU

Recently, Ion Ceban’s party joined the pro-European referendum campaign. However, the real interests of the Chisinau mayor have long gone beyond the Moldovan electoral field – the MAN party, following in the footsteps of the ruling PAS, is trying to integrate itself into the cohesive political system emerging on both banks of the Prut River

Last week, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party and Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu received 65 primars from Moldova. All local elected officials represented two political formations: MAN and PSDE. Ciolacu is one of the main candidates in the presidential election to be held on 24 November, a month later than the Moldovan election. A week afterwards, the Romanians will have to decide on the new composition of the parliament. Thus, the meeting of the PSD leader with the Moldovan mayors had an obvious electoral background. The prime minister certainly didn’t campaign for them to vote for him and his party in November-December. It was a matter of coordinating the efforts, with Ion Ceban’s associates discussing MAN’s further involvement in the Romanian electoral processes. Although the door of the presidential race has closed for Ceban, he has not given up active political endeavors, turning his attention to the Romanian and EU elections. Back in early April, the ex-socialist met with Marcel Ciolacu in Bucharest, where he apparently offered his services to promote Romanian party’s interests on the left bank of the Prut. This happened two months before the elections to the European Parliament, at the height of the electoral campaign. Formally, the interests of the Romanian Social Democrats in Moldova are represented by the PSDE, but given its limited capacity and internal squabbles, MAN’s offer came in very handy. The party of the Chisinau mayor took full advantage of its chance, directing its idle organizational resources to the agitation of Moldovans with Romanian citizenship, majority of whom resides in the capital. Ion Ceban actively publicized his involvement in the pan-European elections through his support for the PSD, although the latter denied having formal agreements with MAN. Remarkably, PAS at the same time supported Ciolacu’s coalition partners from the National Liberal Party of President Klaus Iohannis and former Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca. In spring, Igor Grosu openly urged to vote for it. In fact, however, it turned out that both the authorities and the opposition represented by MAN worked together in the interests of the ruling coalition in Romania, which, incidentally, won a confident victory in the 9 June elections, leaving the nationalist AUR and S.O.S. Romania far behind. Both Moldovan parties were extremely satisfied with the assistance for their Romanian partners. After the release of the results obtained by the PSD informal partners, Ceban was not shy to declare his significant contribution, as MAN activists distributed 150,000 Romanian newspapers in Chisinau alone. Of course, we can say that 57 thousand Moldovan voters who came to the polling stations in Romania do not make much difference in the all-Romanian voting, but the trends are obvious. Many of our political projects in the conditions of censorship and administrative pressure now consider entering the Romanian arena as the most promising way of development. Even if nobody will take them seriously there as independent units, for obvious reasons, but many people are interested in getting a party cell in Bessarabia, ready to work for an audience of a million Romanian subjects. Especially when in Moldova there are enough people willing to become such a branch. As soon as the main players in Romania realize that they have gained a fully loyal electorate beyond the Prut, the number of polling stations on the territory of Moldova for national elections will increase significantly. This is already happening. For example, in the 2019 European Parliament elections, the Romanian authorities opened 36 polling stations, and this summer already 52. Hence the increase in voters by as much as 20,000. And this is despite the fact that the interest of our residents in the elections to the body located two thousand kilometers away from Chisinau is still low. The presidential elections are another matter. In the same 2019, the turnout of Moldovan voters in the second round was 52 thousand people at the 36 polling stations. Thatэs almost 1,500 per polling station. Just to compare, in 2014 there were 21 polling stations, and in 2009 there were only 13. One can imagine that with the hypothetical opening of, let’s say, 180 polling stations in Moldova, it would be possible to cover all Romanian citizens with the right to vote, of which there were about 240 thousand in 2019. Hence the understandable inclination towards Romania of many Moldovan political forces. Thus, the integration processes between Moldova and Romania affect not only the socio-economic and humanitarian sectors, but also actively cover the political system. It is already possible to discuss the hypothetical possibility of organizing a direct all-Romanian vote. Such probes have already been made in the neighboring country when mentioning Maia Sandu as a potential candidate in the struggle for the presidential seat in Cotroceni Palace. However, the most likely scenario would be a gradual diffusion of electoral campaigns on both sides of the Prut, when the increased number of Romanian citizens with each new electoral cycle would favor participation in the votes organized by Bucharest, while the intra-Moldovan campaigns would finally acquire an auxiliary provincial character. One more point about the upcoming elections. In order to retain power, the Romanian Social Democratic and National Liberal Parties are likely to maintain their coalition even after the vote. This means that the further strategy of their parallel support by the ruling PAS and the opposition MAN will bring the leaders of the latter considerable dividends from actual cooperation in the interests of suzerains across the Prut. Given that both Sandu’s party and Ceban’s faction have signed a pact for European integration and are proven partners for the ruling elites in Bucharest, an official coalition between PAS and MAN after the 2025 parliamentary elections becomes even more obvious – it seems that such an alliance would easily receive Romania’s blessing and support.