“Maia Sandu, PAS, and a Nation's Boiling Point”

While the government scrambles to squeeze the last remaining funds out of businesses and ordinary citizens through its fiscal reform, the extended family of the country’s political leadership, Maia Sandu included, keeps pocketing millions of lei from cushy state sinecures

Semyon ALBU, RTA: Something has clearly set the ground ablaze beneath the ruling regime’s feet. One could almost believe they’ve been hexed – so relentless is the deluge of bad news and damaging events. But the roots of this phenomenon are anything but mystical. It is simply that the catalogue of managerial failures, the capture of state bodies and institutions, the use of power for naked enrichment, and all the rest are now surfacing with ever-greater frequency. And they do more than just batter the long-tarnished image of the ruling party and its top brass. They lay bare the true visage of a “yellow octopus” whose tentacles have coiled tightly around our state. It is hardly a secret any longer that PAS is riven with internal factions, each jostling fiercely for a share of the shrinking pool of lucrative state sinecures. Just this past week, we laid bare exactly what this looks like, using the long-suffering Chisinau International Airport as a case in point. In the course of these internecine battles, the rivals, alongside an energetic carve-up of our Moldovan pie, do not neglect to land the occasional preemptive strike by way of kompromat, in the process dredging up some exceedingly piquant details. One such leak has ignited a scandal of devastating proportions that continues to rage and has now directly engulfed the hitherto “untouchable” Maia Sandu. The subject is the wholesale placement of the president’s numerous relatives in exceedingly cushy positions across the public sector and state bodies. In truth, we have been documenting this pernicious trend for quite some time. But until recently, these episodes drew little attention, and covering them was a risky, costly business for any media outlet. Now, thanks to the clan warfare raging inside PAS, the impossible has become possible. Fair to say, cronyism is hardly something that shocks our people. Over the decades of independence, it has become a chronic affliction of every ruling regime this country has known. But the issue is different. Maia Sandu and her coterie were elected precisely because people wanted change, at long last. The “yellows” promised to build a meritocratic state, one governed exclusively by capable and worthy citizens. And it was tempting to believe that individuals educated and professionally seasoned in elite Western institutions would never stoop to reproducing the practices of their “Soviet-era” predecessors, whom Sandu and PAS endlessly excoriate, blaming them for every misfortune that has befallen Moldova. As it turns out, they would; and with a swagger, a brazenness, and a want of scruple that would make even Voronin and Plahotniuc envious. Today, a person can be installed at the trough without so much as a competitive process, pocket 120,000 lei a month for a couple of social media posts, and by all appearances not even reside permanently in Moldova. Provided, of course, that this is no ordinary person but rather the first cousin of the head of state. Yes, I am referring to none other than Anastasia Taburceanu, who, ever since the electoral triumph of her illustrious relative and the latter’s partisan brainchild, has scarcely set foot outside state structures and enjoys a more than tidy income. But she is merely one specimen from a whole constellation of such cases. The list of posts occupied by Sandu’s nearest and dearest reads like a directory of the state apparatus: they run the parliamentary speaker’s office, head up state-owned enterprises, direct free economic zones under the Ministry of Economy, manage structural subdivisions of Moldelectrica, advise the government on reforms, serve in diplomatic postings... A remarkably gifted family, one must say. And patriots to a fault, every last one of them, eager to serve the state for a “modest fee” starting at a few tens of thousands of lei per month. As it happens, other PAS grandees, Igor Grosu among them, also turn out, upon closer inspection, to possess exceptionally talented relatives. The irony, of course, is that just last year Maia Sandu herself came forward with an initiative to slash the bloated salaries of certain officials. The PAS parliamentary faction duly “gave birth” to a corresponding bill that would have imposed limits on the pay of select directors and bureaucrats. But then, presumably, someone ran the numbers on just how many of the “right” people stood to take a financial hit and the draft was quietly withdrawn, never to be spoken of again. To say that the public is disillusioned by this state of affairs would be a spectacular understatement. PAS is now scrambling to douse the flames: the scandal-tainted Taburceanu has stepped down and pledged to return the million she pocketed – a cheap stunt, plain and simple, designed to dodge criminal liability for fictitious employment and illicit enrichment. A couple of days later, the president herself finally surfaced on air, only to claim she knew nothing whatsoever about the matter and that, yes, the money ought to be paid back. It is a rich irony that this fundamentally corrupt spectacle is unfolding against the backdrop of the government’s own fiscal reform that appears to have provoked near-universal outrage. Not a day passes without yet another sector stepping forward to deliver grim prognostications that the unified VAT rate will bring catastrophic consequences in its wake. Farmers speak of ruin and have taken to the streets, blocking national roads and border crossings. The HoReCa sector warns of mass closures. Exporters darkly predict a liquidity crunch and a collapse in productive investment. The real estate industry foresees a further spike in housing prices. And so the list goes on. What makes it particularly farcical is that some of the loudest outcry comes from former and even sitting officials of the regime. Ala Nemerenco and Health Minister Emil Ceban are now sounding the alarm that, post-reform, medicines risk becoming a luxury for the majority of the population and that the healthcare system will be gutted. Experts known for their loyalty to the government have likewise come out against the planned overhaul, as has, for instance, the American Chamber of Commerce in Moldova. Yet the government remains resolute: the reform will go ahead, like it or not, and the only thing up for discussion are the odd adjustments around the margins. The authorities need cash, and fast. The model of living on credit that has sustained the regime throughout these past years has run its course, and international partners are demanding that the taxpaying population be sheared more aggressively, at any cost. That such measures might yield revenue only in the short term, and thereafter simply finish off a national economy already on life support, troubles no one in power. The main thing is that the PAS operatives, along with their kith and kin, will be just fine. The funds now being wrung out will surely suffice to cover their million-lei state-sector salaries for the foreseeable future.