PAS Regime to Ban Social Networks?

Anton ŠVEC

The authorities, through the Speaker of Parliament, promised to consider the possibility of restricting the operation of TikTok and Telegram in Moldova - and thus continue the attack on freedom of speech

A surprising picture has been observed lately. Maia Sandu is resting after her unconvincing victory in the second round of elections. The government is shamefully standing aside after nominal reshuffles, fully aware of its temporary and doomed status before the parliamentary campaign. At the same time, commentators close to the government and representatives of the PAS team have captured the media environment, the most active of whom is the speaker of parliament. This arrangement, which resulted from the ban of opposition TV channels, print media and websites, suits the current regime, which has quite specific authoritarian and even totalitarian features. Being deprived of access to traditional information platforms, the opposition has partially gone digital. In messengers and social networks one can still find critical assessments of PAS activities, including those published by active opposition politicians, which inevitably causes concern to Maia Sandu and her entourage. As we can see, the same Igor Grosu would prefer to get rid of alternative points of view at all, in order not to be distracted from the further process of usurpation of power under the guise of integration into the European Union. Earlier this week, the parliament speaker confirmed that the authorities are considering banning TikTok and Telegram in Moldova: “...if we see that we are not being heard, we will have the right to defend our country. I do not rule out that if we see that they pose some kind of danger to the country, we will be forced to intervene.” According to Grosu, these platforms have grown so large that they can influence democratic processes and are “cynically used by autocracies, such as Russia, against small countries individually.” RTA’s editorial staff knows firsthand what “PAS interference” means, as do dozens of other free media outlets previously banned by the regime. Meanwhile, political pluralism and freedom of opinion still exist in Telegram, as does normal journalistic work. The messenger can hardly be linked directly to Russia or criminal offences, especially after its founder Pavel Durov reached an agreement with the French authorities and guaranteed that the administration would consider motivated law enforcement requests. And even though Telegram, due to its massive scale, is indeed used by criminal elements to coordinate criminal activities in the sense of fraud and trade in illicit goods, however, such opportunities are provided by absolutely any messenger. After all, no one is announcing plans to ban e-mail services or landline telephone services in order to combat regular messages about bombings or fake newsletters. But PAS reacted sharply to the media side of its own electoral failures. Igor Grosu was particularly impressed by the unexpected success in the first round of the Romanian presidential election of the alternative candidate Calin Georgescu, who campaigned mainly on TikTok. The regime realizes that usurping the traditional information space (media and television) is no longer enough to clean up the entire media field and extract electoral and political dividends - it needs a higher level of repression, it needs to get into every phone and tablet, every computer. The question is how citizens who use these applications in everyday life and mostly for completely apolitical purposes will react. A complete ban on Telegram and TikTok would provoke problems both with the “founding countries” (which is not a serious issue for Moldova, as there is no political partnership or significant trade with either Russia or China) and with regulators, as well as with local and international human rights structures. However, in recent years PAS has demonstrated absolute indifference to criticism of its authoritarian tendencies, even regardless of the line of criticism. It remains to be seen whether such a moratorium on the operation of social networks in Moldova will become an effective political tool. The fact is that most of the potential electoral competitors of PAS are counting not only on TikTok and Telegram. For example, Ion Ceban’s Man Party controls Chisinau, including visual campaigning in the capital, and has also stepped up its efforts to open representative offices across the country - recently the party office was launched in Gagauzia. Ilan Sor still has his own representation in parliament, while his subordinates tend to be more action-oriented, with a penchant for outdoor events and a preference for personalized distribution of printed campaigning. The Socialist and Communist parties have an extensive network of offices and chapters in almost every district of the country, often reaching out to voters with video clips in statement format, which can be posted on absolutely any platform, from Youtube to Odnoklassniki. Thus, banning the two social networks will in no way solve the issue of public access to alternative political information, which has become a problem for the authorities. But it will make the everyday life of messenger users a little less comfortable, and they themselves will become more embittered against the government. It should be remembered that the careers of Maia Sandu, Igor Grosu, Radu Marian and others in power in Moldova started 15 years ago with the so-called “Twitter revolution”. Now it is no longer a Twitter, but an X owned by Ilon Musk, promoting a conservative agenda (it is said that Robert Kennedy Jr., the Minister of Health of the US President-elect, supported by Ilon Musk, is going to Bucharest to support Calin Georgescu in the second round), and the protest possibilities of this social network have not diminished over time. Will the regime want to ban it too, or will it be afraid of the January shout from Washington? Igor Grosu’s unenviable fate is to cling to power, fearing Telegram revolution, TikTok revolution, but unable to escape revolution-X or simply stop being afraid.