Expert: Parliament Will Be Completely Different in a Year

With the parliamentary race approaching, various party structures, blocs and movements start to emerge in the Moldovan political space, so the voter will have a wide range of choices in 2025

Sergiu CEBAN, RTA: The presidential election, which has come to an end, is smoothly turning into the race for the new parliament, slated for the third quarter of next year. From the point of view of access to real power, it is almost of key importance: in fact, the battle for the post of head of state was nothing more than a prologue for the overwhelming number of candidates. And even for the ruling regime, Maia Sandu’s re-election is more of an interim phase and a symbolic political event. We still have a while before the new electoral battle, but for the main players there is not much time. It is probably untimely to give specific forecasts about who will take the deputy seats and in what proportion, but it is quite possible to examine the starting positions of the participants. Let’s start with the ruling Action and Solidarity Party. Obviously, it will not repeat the success of 2021, and even corrupted experts openly admit that. Given the need to retain power and ensure the irreversibility of the European integration process, the main task of PAS is to get the highest possible result, allowing it to form a coalition with any of the minority partners who share the pro-Western path of development. However, given the rating and the number of votes for Alexandr Stoianoglo, the potential for protest voting is very high, and it will inevitably affect the final results of PAS. The presidential election may have demonstrated that voters are not ready to rest all the responsibility on Maia Sandu, who is also associated with success in rapprochement with the EU and the West. But as far as the situation inside the country is concerned – economy, social, energy, tariffs, etc..– the ruling party and the government formed by it bear all the blame. PAS technologists will undoubtedly try to transfer the rating of the re-elected president, but the sum of factors and electoral traditions suggests that our citizens are very selective and use different sets of criteria for different votes. The results of the local elections, the failure of the referendum and Maia Sandu inside Moldova reflect a progressive decline, even if not sharp, and there are no factors for a radical change of this trend. After Sandu’s victory, some analysts once again call on the Action and Solidarity Party to be prudent, to abandon its arrogance and to initially identify future coalition partners from among the pro-European parties. I think that if such attempts will take place, it will be more of a show, because only the voter is able to sober PAS ridding it of an acute form of political egoism. Things are also far from clear in the opposition flank, which is built around the left and center-left forces. It is fundamentally crucial for them not to allow the pro-Europeans to create a stable parliamentary majority. In the most optimistic scenario, they plan to capture full power and push PAS into the opposition. In the less favorable scenario, the plan is to force the majority pro-European faction into a tactical alliance with one of the left-wing parties in order to balance the country’s governance. Everything is more or less obvious with the targeting in this segment. The only question is who exactly will enter the race. The bloc of socialists and communists is more dead than alive, representing the most severe crisis in which the left-wing forces find themselves after a series of defeats in 2020-2021. The left wing has long been in need of restructuring and rebranding, but there is not much time left to make any fundamental decisions. The main intrigue, as it seems to us, will unfold around who will become the main frontman of the leftist forces and who will lead the PSRM in the elections. From the point of view of logic and common sense, this person should be Alexandr Stoianoglo, who in just a few months has become a nation-scale politician. However, as experience shows, Igor Dodon is unlikely to agree to abandon the position of leader so easily. Such a change was hardly part of his plans, because the ex-prosecutor was to take the post of president, and on this win streak Dodon would return to the big Moldovan politics. Now there is a possibility that Stoianoglo’s defeat will shove Dodon to the “political oblivion”. This dilemma puts Alexandr Stoianoglo before a choice: to wait for Dodon to prepare or to set sail on his own with his own political project. In this case, the PSRM risks losing a solid part of the electorate and entering the future parliament as minority statists without the slightest chance of returning to power. And despite the active backlash of the ruling regime, Ilan Sor is sure to make his contribution to the balance on the left flank. He is likely to launch new political projects, as well as to nurture the existing ones, which were successfully tested in the first round of the presidential election. Besides, the intrigue will unfold in the center of Moldova’s political spectrum, which no one has managed to occupy firmly so far. Renato Usatii has made a good breakthrough in this direction, whose supporters, despite their eclecticism, mostly consist of people with moderate views. However, due to the specifics of his image, he is unlikely to be able to attract this large niche to his side. Soon we will surely see another maneuver from the mayor of Chisinau, Ion Ceban. As we know, he has decided to stay out the presidential campaign and will concentrate on his immediate duties. However, the fact that on the eve of the second round, Maia Sandu and Alexandr Stoianoglo held meetings with Ceban indicates that he is actually recognized as a republican-level politician with a solid electoral base. The capital’s mayor will also try to attract the centrist voters, so as not to enter into a tough competition with either PAS or the left. The former Bashkan of Gagauzia, Irina Vlah, who, after a relatively successful participation in the first round of the presidential elections, is creating the Heart of Moldova party, is also aiming at the same electorate. As the time passes, various party structures, blocs, and movements are already emerging in Moldova’s political field, so voters will have a wide range of choices in 2025. Despite the fact that only general outlines can be seen so far, it is already obvious that the future parliament will look drastically different and much more diverse than the current one. Consequently, the domestic political landscape will change as well.