Ruling Party Unleashes a New Wave of National Division

The aggressive narratives employed by PAS during the election campaign, centered on intolerance toward opponents and the search for external enemies, have penetrated society, provoking a new stage of division

“Winners can’t be judged” and “any port in a storm” are well-known expressions that boil down to the idea that all available means must be used to achieve one’s goal. The struggle for power, especially for holding onto it, can drive participants to resort to the most radical measures, the negative consequences of which often far outweigh the actual value of the offices and positions at stake. The collateral damage can be assessed soberly only after a complete victory, if such a victory ever occurs. Yet even then, restoring what has been lost may prove impossible. The onset of open confrontation, including a military dimension, between states and other actors in international relations as a result of domestic political struggle is nothing new. The inevitability of entering into conflict has acted as a mobilizing factor for people for thousands of years. In just the first quarter of this century alone, ruling elites in certain states, driven purely by electoral considerations, have provoked dozens of armed conflicts around the world. The most recent example is Israel. Countless times there, military threats have become either the leitmotif of electoral campaigns or a tool for the redistribution of material resources. Yet in every case this has led to long-term changes within society. Uncertainty, mistrust, fear, the rejection of tolerance, and the encouragement of discrimination – all of these, in addition to creating fertile ground for manipulation and propaganda, drive the degradation of the state. Many people in our country naively believed that radical slogans and calls for reprisals against dissenters were merely the preserve of isolated fringe elements that no one took seriously. Such individuals have always existed within the ruling party’s ranks, but their odious views and aggressive actions occasionally had to be publicly disavowed. Yet once the active phase of the electoral campaign began, those very radical and militant slogans became the central leitmotif of the ruling party and all institutions under its control, including the media. In PAS’ information war, everything that could shake up the electorate was deployed, even fabricated stories about Russia’s alleged plans to exterminate Moldovans and repopulate our country with Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. The hysteria reached unprecedented heights: acknowledgment of an imminent external threat looming over the country, an active search for “Kremlin collaborators”, Sor’s servants and his “dirty money”, the public lynching of the opposition, and aggressive hate speech directed at residents of the Left Bank and Gagauzia. Under the slogan “The Homeland in danger”, thousands of our citizens were sanctioned and discriminated against during the parliamentary campaign. Yet the most dangerous development was that the authorities abandoned the state’s monopoly on violence, not suppressing, but rather encouraging terror within society. The elections are over. The ruling party has fully retained power and is celebrating victory. Against this backdrop, its rhetoric has somewhat softened. Whereas before the elections it categorically asserted that hundreds of thousands of euros (first 300, later 200) had been used by outside forces to bribe voters, after the ballots were counted it turned out that nothing had influenced the electoral process or its legitimacy. Calls to isolate residents on the other side of the Dniester, as Russia’s debtors for gas and staunch opponents of the country’s European future, were replaced by assurances of the Transnistrians’ ability to appreciate European prospects. The overt hostility and marginalization of Gagauz elites and ordinary residents of the autonomy have also, for now, fallen off the agenda. It is clear that this shift in the authorities’ public tone does not mean an end to the pernicious practice of persecuting dissenters, but there is no longer any need to maintain the same level of alarm. PAS officials themselves openly admit that they have grown weary of constantly fueling tension. However, the narratives of hostility and intolerance previously injected into the population have not only continued to persist but are actively spreading. A striking example is the negative reaction to any critical remarks directed at the government’s policies and actions during the election period. Attempts to analyze what has happened encounter strong resistance. When certain influencers point to violations of electoral rights, it becomes grounds for mass condemnation and media lynching. For instance, highlighting the precedent of widespread restrictions on the access of residents from the Left Bank regions to the ballot box is met with accusations of supporting separatism, working for the Kremlin, undermining national security, or is simply accompanied by direct threats. Such reactions are voiced or endorsed by people of various professions, backgrounds, and social statuses. The aggressive rhetoric and vocabulary of politicians have been adopted alike by Romanian-speaking members of the national intelligentsia, Russian-speaking housewives, businessmen who relocated from Ukraine, and many others. Critical outcries and references to obvious violations of rights and freedoms, as well as the departure from democratic principles and European values, are often dismissed by many of our citizens in exactly the same way the authorities treated the opposition during the election period. Many of them have fallen victim to propaganda and manipulation, actively retransmitting in the public sphere destructive negative messages that the government itself no longer even needs. One could say that PAS has cultivated an entire cohort of activists who now see themselves as judges over all dissenters and they cannot be stopped. All of this is set to be used in society as a government-legitimized tool for a “war of all against all”: to eliminate an unwanted business competitor, to settle scores with a neighbor over loud music, or to bully colleagues within collectives. The degradation of social bonds, mutual hostility, and the collapse of the system of humanitarian values and moral principles phenomena already unfolding in war-torn neighboring Ukraine, could very soon become our own reality. Signs of such serious problems in what was once a relatively tolerant and cohesive Moldovan society have so far attracted little attention from politicians preoccupied with the distribution of portfolios. For now, these concerns remain the domain of philosophers and sociologists. But before long, will inevitably spill over into new conflicts, capable of finally burying both our past democratic achievements and statehood itself.