Deep Dive - Part 1: The New Government Program

What Exactly does the New Government Have Planned?

Welcome back to “Deep Dives” at Moldova Matters! These subscriber only articles try to take a more in-depth look at some issue driving the news in Moldova. This week we will be doing part 1 of a 2 part series looking at the new government that Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita has formed. In this first part, we will take a look at the government “Program.” In the second, we will look at the ministers and key figures responsible for implementing that program. 

What is a Government Program?

​​In Moldova, a new government is proposed by the majority faction in parliament, or by a coalition of parties representing a majority. When it comes time to invest the new government by means of a vote of confidence, the proposed prime minister and her cabinet must present their plan of action and take questions from the opposition. The “program” is a sort of manifesto setting out the key challenges facing the country, major goals of the government, and specific policies that they intend to implement. In a sense, it is a plan of action that the Prime Minister is responsible for fulfilling to the parliament, and in turn, her ministers are responsible for enacting for her. 

In the last 10 years, government programs have been created by negotiating positions between the parties representing the political coalition. This means that the parties would effectively merge together their election platforms into a program. Since PAS has taken a massive majority in parliament, Prime Minister Gavrilita was able to draw directly on the party election platform in order to build the government program. However, while the election platform was designed for political communication - i.e. “good times for entrepreneurs” with a few key policies. This program is much much more detailed. 

Today at Moldova Matters we will try and create a sort of overview of the Prime Minister’s program of government. The full document is available for reading online (Romanian) and runs around 41 pages. Summarizing the content is harder than the length would imply since those pages are primarily bullet points running 1-2 lines that encompass huge policy ideas like “renovating the facade of 20% of the soviet era buildings in Moldova.”  This article does not pretend to summarize all this content - if you are interested, take a look at the above link with google translate as your guide. 

We will start with an overview of the program and the key challenges they hope to address while in office. Following that, our plan is to look primarily at 3 sections - COVID-19 Response, Economic Policy and Anti-Corruption Policy. After this, we will look briefly at particularly innovative ideas in other sections and try to wrap up with some conclusions. 

Let the Good Times Begin

The Program begins with a statement of vision outlining the good times coming for Moldova. This vision statement is meant to guide the entire program and ground it in a simple set of goals. Here is the vision stated in full: 

“The government program "Moldova of good times" aims to create here, at home, such conditions so that each person can achieve their own dreams and their own potential, so that families can live together with parents with their children. "Moldova of the good times" will help society to free itself from fear, people to gain confidence in their own strengths, the economy - to develop without obstacles, and state institutions to act in the name and in the interest of citizens.”

Following the statement of what they hope to achieve, the government program goes on to list the key challenges facing Moldova at this time. Well go through some of these challenges one by one with short summaries:

1. Poor Quality Government

The first problem is the failure of the governments and bureaucracies of the past to face the challenges facing the nation. Endemic corruption and criminal schemes lie at the core of this issue and are fed by disinterest from law enforcement and even laws and structures that are *designed* to facilitate criminal action. Also, when good laws are passed, there is little to no followthrough or implementation work. This means that the law may be on the books, but nothing changes. The problem of poor government is the root of other issues and exacerbates all other problems and so must be addressed head on. 

2. Poverty and Inequality

Moldova is a deeply unequal nation. Pre-pandemic 25% of the population lived below the poverty line and 10% faced dire poverty without sufficient access to food. All this has been exacerbated by the pandemic. The government believes there is a key need to increase social benefits and increase participation in the economy. 

Author’s note: it is interesting that in discussing inequality, the focus was on the poor. Anyone who has lived in Chisinau knows that there is almost no city regionally with a higher proportion of luxury cars. So inequality is not just about the poor but also about just how rich the wealthy are. This, as well as ideas of taxation, are mostly left out of this program. 

3. Not Enough Well Paid Jobs

There simply aren’t enough good jobs in Moldova. This is caused by a poor regulatory environment for business, corruption forcing the shutdown of new companies or simply harassing them. Failure of state bodies to hold labor violators to account. Major distrust between the private and public sectors and more. Interestingly, the program notes the threat of automation as being very serious to Moldova. Specifically, Moldova’s regional advantage has been low wage workers. That is fading with labor migration and may become even less important as western european countries focus more on automation. 

4. Serious Challenges in Infrastructure

Specifically mentioned are roads and rural infrastructure. In particular, lack of water and sanitation in the villages as well as “energy poverty” manifest in the fact that 90% of rural households use wood or coal burning stoves to heat their homes. 

5. Worries about Climate Change

Of particular concern to Moldova is the “backwardness” of the agricultural sector that contributes 11% to the nation’s economy (by GDP, 21% of jobs).  This is driven by both lack of modern irrigation structures to combat drought conditions as well as energy security problems that affect all business. 

6. National Security Threats

In particular, energy security. Connections to EU natural gas pipelines are happening too slowly to change the fact that Moldova is completely reliant on Russian energy. An issue that further complicates the Transnistria issue which is very tied up in gas transit and gas debt. 

7. Declining and Aging Population

Due to migration Moldova’s population is rapidly declining across all metrics. Particularly young people are leaving and families are having fewer children. This has resulted in the average age of the population going from 37.4 to 39.6 just in the last 7 years. 

In addition to these challenges, they also list environmental sustainability, education problems, health problems and rising crime rates as key issues. 

Policy Proposals

We will take a look at sector by sector policy proposals. The scope of Moldova Matters is generally around politics and economics, so while the program goes into lots and lots of areas, we will take particular focus on those that touch on the focus areas of the newsletter. 

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That’s it for this preview of the Deep Dive into the policy program of the new Gavrilita Government. If you want to read more, and get additional subscriber only content like this - please subscribe!! For just $5 / mo you can support the work we do at Moldova Matters and get even more content for yourself!