PAS and the State’s Recurring Failures

The Moldovan government is increasingly facing not merely socioeconomic challenges, but signs of a deep institutional crisis. Recent events show that this erosion is now affecting even the state’s most basic functions

Any political regime reaches a point when its failures, starting as isolated setbacks, escalate into a state of complete chaos. Judging by the events of recent weeks, our country under PAS is approaching precisely this point, as all the signs of the deterioration of state governance are evident. Moreover, we are not talking about the socio-economic sphere, where crisis has long been the norm, but about the far more dangerous erosion of the state’s law enforcement and military-security apparatus. First and foremost, this concerns the high-profile incident in Chisinau, which resulted in a young man being wounded and a minor losing his life. Initially, the authorities, in an effort to control the narrative, attempted to conceal the true circumstances of the incident, claiming that the cause of death was “shock and subsequent coma”. A day later, according to the medical report, it became known that the boy had in fact died from a gunshot wound. Of course, they were unable to hide the truth, but they did manage to add a tinge of institutional lies to the tragedy. Which, incidentally, has long since become the norm for the current generation of our officials. Meanwhile, in the Riscani district, two minors – aged ten and eleven – and an eighteen-year-old man were hospitalized after an object resembling an anti-hail rocket exploded. It is difficult to speak of “accidental victims”, since the children were injured primarily because dangerous objects were, for some reason, freely accessible. In any normally functioning country, such an incident would automatically trigger a chain of rigorous inspections, resignations, and political accountability. But here, as usual, they launch endless administrative investigations that, as a rule, come to nothing. And yesterday morning outside the walls of Prison No. 18 in Branesti turned into something bordering on theatrical absurdity. A Toyota Auris attempted to drive through the entrance gate onto the prison grounds, with a former inmate – who had been released several months ago – behind the wheel. In a modern democratic system, a series of such extraordinary incidents would inevitably lead to political repercussions due to obvious systemic failures. Yet our leaders continue to portray these events as “isolated incidents” unrelated to the overall state of government institutions. The PAS crisis management playbook is executed almost flawlessly in these cases. First, the agency issues a brief statement; loyal media outlets pick up on the neutral wording; and court-appointed expert pundits explain the incident as a result of the “complexity of the transition period” or the “objective difficulties of reforming” the country. And yet another scandal gets lost in the news cycle. The paradox of the current government is that it tries to maintain the image of an effective pro-European manager despite clear signs of institutional collapse. In the public sphere, PAS continues to speak of modernization, reforms, and strengthening the state, but in reality, things look quite different. The same security forces, to put it bluntly, are largely engaged in serving the ruling regime’s political interests. As we know, the security forces demonstrate enviable coordination in tasks such as dispersing “Sor’s electorate” and escorting “Immortal Regiment” marches, while the effectiveness of the law enforcement system is measured by slightly different indicators. These include the ability to prevent tragedies, crack down on drug trafficking, and ensure the safety of citizens – and, above all, children. The Ministry of Defense’s activities have long been marred by a string of negative incidents, including repeated fatalities. Yet, for some reason, officials have remained in their posts every time, while investigations have fizzled out amid procedural red tape. Unfortunately, in this case, where children have already become victims, all these self-satisfied and grandiose statements about strengthening the country’s security sector look even more like empty rhetoric aimed at an undiscerning Brussels audience. Another problem facing PAS today is that, for a long time, the party built its political legitimacy solely on a moral contrast with the former elites. For the first few years, voters were offered a simple, exculpatory explanation: yes, times are tough; yes, there have been miscalculations and mistakes; but now, the people at the helm are definitely honest and good. Six years later, this narrative has practically run its course. Even the audience loyal to Sandu and PAS is increasingly sensing the general incompetence of the governing system, which is beginning to crumble across all major fronts simultaneously. Here the regime has fallen into the trap of its own model of control over the country. This model is structured vertically in such a way that key figures in the security forces, the judiciary, and the public sector are guaranteed so-called “official immunity”. Not for professional merit, but for unquestioning political loyalty. Consequently, the potential replacement of even one such appointee instantly puts all the other protégés of various influential clans within PAS in a precarious position, and this is already fraught with centrifugal forces within the party itself. Against this backdrop, Kaja Kallas’ recent visit to the Ministry of Defense, the European Union’s stated willingness to increase financial injections into the military sector, and the constant talk of modernizing the army are beginning to look increasingly absurd. In recent years, the EU has invested with enviable persistence in our country’s defense facade, but this does nothing to change the internal state of the ministry. Moreover, a reasonable question arises: is the current Ministry of Defense capable of effectively managing external resources if it is already showing serious signs of disorganization, when even in peacetime soldiers are regularly dying in military units? That is why the topic of a possible “government reshuffle” is coming up increasingly frequently in expert discussions. For PAS, this may be the only way to temporarily defuse the growing social tension. The logic is straightforward: it is easier to dismiss the entire cabinet, presenting it as a major personnel shake-up, than to sacrifice individual figures under pressure from the opposition and thereby disrupt intra-party consensus. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that PAS will take precisely this path, which allows for diffusing responsibility so that individual resignations do not undermine the political regime as a whole. The fact is, however, that these camouflaged personnel reshuffles are unlikely to reverse this administration’s downward trend. Moldovan society no longer sees any strategy, only a chaotic, week-to-week scramble to “put out fires” in one sector or another. And the harder the government tries to keep the situation under control by concentrating resources and manually controlling the information environment, the more noticeable the signs of its internal chaos become. And this, as is well known, is a typical problem of political regimes in which a monopoly on governance replaces functional state institutions. It is crucial to note that the decline of the state’s security apparatus is not merely another link in an endless chain of crises, but a sign of a critical systemic failure in which the government is losing one of its fundamental functions – ensuring the safety of its citizens. The question is not even when this PAS “house of cards” will collapse, but how many more minors must suffer, and how many incidents must go unpunished before even the most loyal government appointees stop looking for excuses and justifications in an attempt to evade personal responsibility.