PAS Governance and Rise of Legal Nihilism

This week has been marked by notable developments surrounding Moldova’s justice system, which, both in substance and context, have confirmed the legal arbitrariness of the Maia Sandu-PAS regime

As expected, the government maintained the state of emergency precisely until the moment of the verdict in Vladimir Plahotniuc’s case on banking fraud was announced. At the request of the executive, parliament will replace the state of emergency with a 60-day period of heightened readiness in the energy sector, starting on Saturday. This “disguised liberalization” appears to have been deliberately timed around the final decision regarding Plahotniuc, who for many years was associated with the phenomenon of the “captured state”. The verdict, which was supposed to serve as the culmination and a marker of the system’s cleansing, instead turned into confirmation of the failure of judicial reform and a blow to the authoritarian regime of Maia Sandu. The oligarch’s extradition, suspiciously timely, played its allotted electoral role. But beyond that, none of PAS’ Brussels-based patrons, it seems, looked further ahead, leaving the final act of the play to the discretion of the presidency. This is not even about the structural and procedural violations in the handling of the case against the former leader of the Democratic Party, the disregard for protests and the legitimate demands of the defense, or the control over the judiciary, regularly underscored by the fact that only those justice officials who cooperate with Sandu’s team successfully pass the vetting process. The point lies in the context and the legacy with which Moldova approached this moment of “democratic triumph” and “breaking with the authoritarian past”. A context that indicates an even lower level of functionality of checks and balances than during the Plahotniuc era, along with an absolutized concentration of power amid legal insecurity, arbitrariness, and the neglect of crisis-related issues. Particularly striking, in a negative sense, is the scandal within the ranks of law enforcement. Officers of the National Anticorruption Center detained the head of the police inspectorate of Chisinau’s Botanica district along with five of his subordinates and placed them in detention for 72 hours. They are suspected of both passive and active corruption, including “providing cover” for drug distribution schemes, as well as personal use of illicit substances. Notably, such allegations had been circulating for quite some time, but the case appeared to remain dormant, as if awaiting a signal from above. The Interior Minister continues to shield the head of the General Police Inspectorate despite the discovery of prohibited items during a search conducted directly within a police institution. This comes amid a three-year prison sentence and an international arrest warrant issued for former GPI chief Alexandru Pinzari in a case involving what was “merely” the fictitious employment of Dorin Damir (with damages estimated at 170,000 lei, and acquittal on three out of five charges). Recently, an extremely unusual decision by the Council of the European Union was published, extending until the end of April 2027 the EU restrictive measures against 23 individuals and 5 entities from Moldova for allegedly engaging in actions aimed at destabilizing the country. Introduced four years ago at Chisinau’s request, these sanctions lack any clear legal basis and function as an anti-democratic instrument of direct political support for PAS from Brussels. How such restrictive measures are supposed to apply, for example, to Evghenia Gutul, who is currently in prison in Moldova, is entirely unclear. This turns the EU Council’s decision in this case from a legal instrument into a political manifesto, the extension of which during and after elections pushes the situation into absurdity. Another development in the justice sphere was the emergency parliamentary hearings on the case of Ludmila Vartic, which produced no answers to the questions raised, while the degree of involvement of a PAS party official in the tragedy was not clearly established. It is evident that through such public events the ruling party is attempting to divert public attention from the substantive aspects of what happened, while the episode in which police issued a fine in the name of a person who was already deceased serves merely as an indicator of the system’s fatal degradation and corruption. A broadly similar assessment of Moldova was presented by the NGO Amnesty International. Chisinau received criticism for restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, impunity within the security services and abuses by state officials, poor detention conditions and torture in penitentiary institutions, as well as the situation in the Transnistrian region. The report also highlighted negatively the new legislation on treason, which may be interpreted expansively, the revocation of licenses from pro-Russian media outlets and television channels, as well as self-censorship among pro-government journalists. The court ruling in the case of Plahotniuc resulted in a 19-year sentence in a closed-type prison. Prosecutors allegedly managed to prove all charges, but still did not obtain the requested 25-year term. In addition, the former oligarch is required to return approximately 60 million dollars to the state. He is also involved in several other criminal cases, which, together with the inevitable appeals, will be examined at a later stage. However, the context and perception of the PAS regime as of April 22 compel a different view of the bank fraud, the “captured state”, and Plahotniuc’s alleged usurpation of power. The verdict, due to its surrounding circumstances, begins to look not like retribution for wrongdoing, but rather as another political reprisal, without any attempt to hold all those responsible or involved to account. The transformation of the regime has not materialized, judicial reform has failed, and there are fewer democratic freedoms and liberties. Only the facade has changed, along with part of the beneficiaries.