Weekly (mini) Roundup

July 14th

This week I’m out of the country taking a first short vacation since the onset of war in Ukraine. We’ll be back next week with a full roundup that will catch us all up on the many small but important stories driving Moldovan news. For now, we’ll just have a mini-roundup focused on the main story of the last week.

Cabinet Reshuffle?

This past week Prime Minister Gavrilita fired Minister of Agriculture Viorel Gerciu in a process that largely seen as chaotic and confused. There have been rumors of a coming cabinet reshuffle for months as the PAS government approaches its one year anniversary and the Prime Minister and senior leaders are openly contemplating making major changes. For the last weeks there has been a basic assumption that this would be a dramatic but decisive move with multiple ministers replaced at once combined with a messaging campaign designed to shows that the government is getting back on track. This is not what happened.

Former Minister Greciu was called in the evening by the Prime Minister and asked to resign. He was surprised to discover that at 8 am the next day a replacement was being appointed and sworn in. Mr. Greciu claimed, right after he was replaced, that he understands the political prerogative of the PM and that no bridges were burned but that it took him by surprise when he was coming in to work that he was being replaced immediately. The Prime Minister appointed the MP leading the Parliamentary Commission on Agriculture, Vladimir Bolya, to the post. Mr. Bolya has a Masters in Economic law, formerly ran a bakery company and he has worked on agricultural issues in Parliament for 3 years.

Cabinet reshuffles are a completely normal political move that sere 2 purposes. Firstly, they are simple replacements of staff. Remove someone who is not performing and replace them. Secondly, they are a political signal that the government is unhappy with its performance and will change direction (while assigning blame to the former minister). This change in the Ministry of Agriculture replaced staffing, but wildly missed the mark in terms of political signaling. Firstly, no one was using the same set of talking points. The former Minister said he was asked to resign. The Press Secretary of the Prime Minister contradicted saying that he didn’t resign but was fired for having lost the confidence of the PM. Now the official line is that he resigned. No journalists were invited to the swearing in ceremony of the new Minister. When asked why not, the Prime Minister said that it was “too early” as the ceremony was done at 8 am. Journalists disagreed and are implying that the government was hiding something in the process. Now Minister Bolya is having to do interviews where he defends starting the work day at 8 am… and we hear nothing about agriculture or a new direction for the government.

The government is now trying to clearly state that no bridges were burned but that it was just time for a change. But the Prime Minister’s statement digs a little harder at the former minister than that:

“If we analyze the decisions that have been made in the field of agriculture over the past 11 months, then most of them came from the parliamentary commission and from you personally [to the new minister]. Therefore, I am fully confident that this transition will be natural, easy and effective for the agricultural sector,”

As we have seen many times in the past with this government the problem here is not substance but communications. Firing a minister is fine, maybe even good, but doing it in a manner such that all the news stories are “process stories” about “who said what when” is politically unproductive. Worse still, this is only the first of what may be multiple ministerial firings. Since they are clearly not doing a single reshuffle we are in a position where all the other ministers must be wondering if they are next.

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