PAS After Munteanu: Past the Point of Recovery

Talk of Alexandru Munteanu’s inevitable resignation had been circulating in political backrooms for quite some time. Our publication wrote back in March that his departure was only a matter of time – the man simply looked too out of place at the head of government. A physicist by training, a financier with over twenty years of experience in Ukraine, he landed in the prime minister’s chair almost overnight, with no political team of his own, no real experience in public administration, and no deep connections in Moldovan politics. The fact that opinion polls showed trust in him barely exceeding one percent only confirmed the obvious: from day one, this was a man in the wrong job. On 3 July, Munteanu announced his resignation in a short Facebook post – with no prior signals and, apparently, no chance to explain his decision in detail at a press conference. Yet it is already clear that this episode cannot simply be brushed aside as a routine personnel reshuffle, however much Maia Sandu’s inner circle might have hoped for that. It is highly likely that this very resignation will mark the point of no return after which the ruling camp enters an entirely different, far more unforgiving phase of political reality. Rather than dealing individually with each figure in the chain of scandals, the presidential apparatus appears to have opted for a simple solution: pin everything on the prime minister and offer him up as a sacrificial lamb. In truth, Munteanu’s fate had been sealed from the start. Having delivered a package of unpopular measures, from the tax on parcels from foreign online marketplaces to the territorial-administrative and fiscal reforms, he was always destined to be discarded. The plan, most likely, was for this to happen closer to the launch of the next major electoral cycle, with a bigger-name replacement waiting in the wings, quite possibly someone with an eye on the presidential race. But the original script, it seems, did not play out as intended. Munteanu, for all the caricatured image of a technocrat, nevertheless managed, quietly but unmistakably, to slam the door on his way out with a terse social media post: “The moment I realized I could no longer carry out my duties in line with my principles and convictions, I decided to step down”. Sandu, unlike him, did not let the airtime slip away. She hastily gathered the press, dismissed any talk of a rift within the government, reduced everything to internal cabinet disputes over the tax reform, and, as ever, sidestepped personal responsibility. A textbook illustration of just how unwilling the top leadership is to acknowledge the real meaning of what is unfolding. In reality, the situation is grave. The prime minister’s parting words mean, quite simply, that he no longer shares the principles by which the state is actually run. And those principles, as it turns out, are a far cry from what PAS laid out in its election manifesto. Munteanu merely confirmed out loud what was already plain to see: corruption within the system has reached its peak. The intended audience for this admission could be voters at home or the external partners watching it all unfold before their eyes. And it came at a moment when, to the accompaniment of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s words about Chisinau’s “determination and steady progress on reforms”, the first accession cluster for EU membership was being ceremonially opened. That cluster, incidentally, covers the rule of law, judicial independence, and the fight against corruption. And leading Moldova’s delegation at the conference in Luxembourg, no less symbolically, was none other than Alexandru Munteanu. In essence, less than a year has passed since PAS resounding parliamentary election victory, yet its government has now fallen and the entire edifice of the ruling regime is riddled with deep cracks. By and large, the cabinet did not collapse because of its own performance, it collapsed because the system itself has rotted through. And now, whoever takes charge of the ministerial team will find it nearly impossible to change things in any fundamental way. The real cause of the current political crisis lies in the very architecture of power: the government has no political mandate of its own, operates within tightly set parameters, and has little real say over anything. Meanwhile, each successive PAS government has turned out weaker than the last and this is especially true of the current one. In just eight months, it has found itself at the center of an unprecedented number of scandals, accompanied by a string of institutional failures and a sharp collapse in public trust, not only in the authorities themselves, but in state institutions, the media, civil society, and the judiciary. The parliamentary majority PAS secured in last September’s elections had already shrunk to 55 seats out of 101, compared to 63 in the previous legislature. In other words, the political cushion the ruling party now has to absorb fresh crises and internal shocks is nothing like what it once was. And the prime minister’s resignation has only piled up more questions. Nothing has been clarified, nothing has been resolved, only a litany of awkward justifications and attempts to shift the blame onto anyone and everyone except the authorities themselves. Just a couple of weeks ago, the country’s political reality was neatly gift-wrapped in a glossy picture: endless forums, investors supposedly queuing up, the opening of negotiations, and one cluster after another being ceremonially unwrapped. As if our country were truly on the verge of an unprecedented economic take-off. In reality, what we are witnessing is a catastrophic start to the decisive phase of talks with the European Union, set against a backdrop of explosive corruption scandals and the prime minister’s resignation. The launch has been so “promising” that one cannot help but ask: if this was the good plan, what, pray tell, does the backup plan look like? PAS has taken a painful blow and it is far from certain it will recover. What is now being put to the test is the resilience of the regime itself, the strength of party discipline, and just how much public pressure can actually move the “yellow” deputies and the forces lurking behind the various internal party factions. Formally, the next steps are clear. Sandu will go through the motions of consulting parliamentary factions, name a new candidate, and that candidate will then go before parliament for a vote of confidence. But informally, talk in Chisinau has already turned to something that until recently seemed unthinkable: early elections, for which PAS, all its calculations notwithstanding, is simply not ready. An enormous amount hangs on whether or not it can pull out of this crisis: the shape of the country’s political landscape, and the real, as opposed to the showcase, prospects for Chisinau’s European integration. That Moldova will not become a “success story” under PAS already looks, it seems, like a near-indisputable fact. The rapid collapse of the government is, unequivocally, a sign of a deeper crisis within the ruling team, driven by serious internal rifts that are now spilling over into concrete decisions with major political fallout. If PAS sticks to its old way of making decisions, the same system of political unaccountability, and a personnel policy that has long outlived its usefulness, then a new cabinet will likely meet the same fate within months. The real question, therefore, is not so much who the next prime minister will be, but whether the regime is capable of offering a fundamentally different model of running the country.