PAS’ Year of Victory Turns into a State of Emergency

The increasingly vocal calls for early parliamentary elections can be seen as a political sentence for PAS, which has become a “lame duck” barely a year into its renewed mandate

PAS is marking the first anniversary of its victory in last year’s elections under circumstances that few could have imagined. Last week, the country declared a state of emergency in the energy and hydrological sectors. And today, in a highly symbolic development, ANRE approved a gas price increase for the second time in a month. A party that just a year ago asked voters for another mandate in the name of an “accelerated European future” has, twelve months later, found itself in a state of utter confusion and hurtling rapidly toward collapse. A year ago, PAS won 50.2% of the valid vote and secured 55 seats in parliament, allowing it to retain a majority without coalition partners, even though it had lost eight seats compared with the 2021 elections. The political leadership chose to interpret the result as confirmation of its course. Yet despite the confident victory, the question of how long the public’s trust would last and how much staying power another single-party parliamentary majority actually had arose very quickly. In 2021, the new “good people” government in yellow vests could still point to a difficult legacy, extraordinary external circumstances, and resistance from the old elites. But by the previous election, those explanations no longer held water, since the presidency, the government, and the parliamentary majority were all part of the same political camp. Neither complex coalition negotiations nor allies capable of blocking particular decisions stood in PAS’ way. As a result, its monopoly on power inevitably became a monopoly on responsibility for the consequences of that power. By October 2025, it had already become clear that there was little to celebrate. The prime minister’s office went to the utterly caricature-like figure of Alexandru Munteanu, while half of the ministerial posts had to be handed to non-partisan professionals. Despite its electoral triumph, the process of forming the government became a telling indicator that, after four years of unchecked power, PAS had still failed to cultivate its own professional elite. Having built a rigid chain of command stretching from the presidential administration down to district mayors’ offices, the ruling regime was effectively forced to “rent” managers, luring them away from major private companies. The attempt to dilute the government’s roster of party-clan appointees with managers brought in from the private sector predictably ended in internal sabotage and behind-the-scenes infighting. In the end, even an impeccable technocratic reputation could not save Munteanu, and on July 3, just eight months after taking the oath of office, he resigned, offering an elaborate explanation about being unable to continue acting in accordance with his own principles and convictions. Vasile Tofan took over as prime minister on July 21, beginning his tenure not with promises, but with an admission that it was necessary to “tighten our belts” and improve the quality of public administration. In other words, he effectively acknowledged from the outset that the economy was in a critical state, barely a year into the ruling party’s tenure. The central story of PAS’ first year was, of course, the MoldATSA scandal. The story of the president’s cousin receiving a hefty salary at the state-owned air traffic management company was immediately dubbed “Verisoara-gate” in the public sphere. The subsequent resignation of Radu Marian, PAS deputy chairman and head of the relevant parliamentary committee, confirmed that this episode was clearly not some random confluence of unforeseen circumstances, but the result of deliberate personnel decisions involving individuals under the patronage of key party officials. It became clear as early as winter that PAS was off to a very poor start with its new mandate: as the government of Munteanu approached its symbolic “first 100 days”, respondents in a poll conducted by one of the country’s leading polling organizations largely gave it scores of 1 to 4 out of 10 (39% of those surveyed), while another 21% gave it 5 to 6 points. “Verisoara-gate” merely accelerated the process, exposing the personnel, political, and administrative reality that had been carefully concealed behind the glossy façade of “unstoppable European integration by 2028”. Among the main reasons for such arbitrariness and impunity on the part of officials is the fact that, over the years of the PAS-Sandu rule, not a single high-profile arrest has resulted in convictions of major corruption figures, while the “vetting” and “pre-vetting” processes in the justice system have dragged on for years and reached a dead end. Ultimately, for PAS, which built its election campaign and political course around breaking with the old ways, the anticorruption agenda and judicial reform have gone from being its main electoral asset to becoming an impossible commitment. The findings of the latest “public opinion barometer”, published on the eve of the anniversary of PAS’ victory in the parliamentary elections, show the mood with which the country and society are approaching this milestone. A majority of respondents believe that Moldova is moving in the wrong direction, while 58.4% say the economic situation has deteriorated over the past year. Trust in the government stands at just 31.6%, while parliament is trusted by 29.6%. Nearly half of those surveyed do not see any political party as representing their interests at all. Thus, a year after the election, PAS can still boast total political control over the state apparatus, but it appears to have finally convinced a majority of citizens that the current ruling regime is no longer capable of turning the situation around for the better. A year ago, PAS had two paths ahead. The first was to learn the lessons of the previous four years and treat its 50.2% result as an advance to be spent on renewing its personnel, creating new drivers of economic growth, and accelerating judicial reform. The second was to interpret the voters’ support as an absolute carte blanche. The party chose the latter, and the result is that we have already seen two prime ministers in a single year, with another change seemingly not out of the question. The party’s approval rating has been steadily collapsing, while its negative rating is dragging down the standing of the government, parliament, the party’s leaders, and the presidency alike. Taken together, these factors appear to explain why the idea of early parliamentary elections is being voiced ever more loudly in society. For a party that formally holds the full extent of political power, this amounts to a political sentence, since PAS has become a “lame duck” already in the first year of its new mandate rather than toward its end. The ruling team appears to have virtually exhausted its internal reserves for a rapid push to overcome the crisis. Consequently, the question of an early change in the country’s leadership is likely to arise with increasing urgency as the months go by, because the socio-economic survival of the country is at stake. Of course, no one simply gives up power, but PAS has, in essence, reached a historic crossroads of its own. If it were to take one path, it would make sense to begin a managed transition, with Maia Sandu gradually moving toward an international career somewhere in Brussels in order to promote the European integration agenda “from the other side”. Meanwhile, the Party of Action and Solidarity would come under the stewardship of its pragmatic wing and seek to rebuild itself ahead of the next electoral cycle, including a possible early election, with the aim of becoming one of the major, but non-majority, factions in the future parliament. The alternative path, most likely, would be to continue sliding along the current trajectory, leading to the uncontrolled collapse of the ruling party’s political monopoly, which it has spent the past five years building. Such a crisis scenario would most likely be accompanied by intensifying conflicts between party clans and competing influence groups, the erosion of the parliamentary majority, internal party wars, and early elections as the final outcome. Ultimately, PAS could meet the fate of all major party projects that reached the peak of their political power only to splinter into smaller factions and gradually dissolve into new electoral projects.