Weekly Roundup

December 4 - December 10

Welcome back to Moldova Matters! In this weekly roundup we will check in with the top stories of the week in Politics and Economics. Subscribe to Moldova Matters to get our Weekly Roundup and other content sent right to your email! And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!

Political Updates

This week, parliament has been extremely busy with a raft of measures large and small getting introduced or passed. We’ll take a quick tour through these initiatives before jumping to the biggest story of the week in politics which is the ever stranger Balti mayoral election. 

New Criminal Punishments for Electoral Corruption 

Parliament has passed a new package of criminal penalties for “electoral corruption.” Organized bussing of voters to polling places is now a criminal offense in Moldova. This prevents non-profits, parties, religious groups and other entities from organizing voter transportation in any way. The law explicitly does not target individuals who give rides to friends or family. The intention is to thread the needle between grassroots organization whereby people far from polling places (such as in the diaspora) rideshare, and organized bussing. Bussing has been a tactic of oligarchic figures for years with organizers offering small bribes in the form of food or petty cash in order to board the bus and vote for a selected candidate. The problem also exists at state run enterprises or public sector workplaces where workers are induced to vote for a certain party in order not to lose their job. In addition to bussing, the new law criminalizes illicit party financing and provides prison terms for offenders as well as liquidation of legal entities that participate. Currently illicit financing is punished inconsistently with fines for the parties and penalties imposed by the Central Election Commission CEC (as we’ll discuss more below). The vote was across party lines with approval 85 - 1 in the 100 seat parliament. 

PAS Raises the Retirement Age (well… kinda. Or not really)

This week PAS passed a law setting the retirement age at 63 for men and 59 for women. The law provides for a gradual increase of the retirement age for women up to 63 by 2028. The Socialist party immediately decried this as “raising the retirement age” which was previously set at 62 for men and 57 for women. The reality though is a bit nuanced. Earlier this year right before the parliamentary elections the Socialists lowered the retirement age from 63 men / 59 women to 62 men / 57 women. This law was to come into effect on January 1, 2022. PAS essentially canceled this law and reverted the retirement ages to…. Well, to the ones in effect right now. So while this made big news and allowed Mr. Dodon to take a stand on a social issue; it was really just a maintenance of the status quo. The Socialists passed the retirement age decrease without providing any solution for the already underfunded pension system as an election promise of sorts that had the added benefit of creating this news cycle when PAS had to roll it back. 

Parliament Raises Salaries for Public Sector Workers

Parliament voted this week to raise salaries for some public sector workers. Most workers will receive some pay increase as base pay was raised from 1800 lei to 3000 lei. But the biggest news came in the form of a large pay increase for the Judges of the Constitutional Court. These judges will have a take home salary of around 60,000 lei per month ($3,390) compared to the 25,000 lei they make now ($1,412). These raises cause outrage from some sectors and quite a lot of arguing on social media. The Prime Minister defended the move as a necessary anti-corruption action saying that it is key to make sure judicial salaries are high enough that people do not feel they have to turn to “outside financing.” 

MoldovaGaz Will be Audited… Twice

Parliament passed a special law this week that will instruct the Chamber of Accounts to audit MoldovaGaz and deliver a report to the legislature by October 2022. The Chamber of Accounts is a sort of national auditing body and is generally only permitted to audit companies that the Moldovan state owns 50% or more of. Since MoldovaGaz is majority owned by GazProm a special law was required to start this process. MPs were quick to note that this is not the audit of historical debts to GazProm that was discussed as part of the negotiations during the energy crisis in past months. This audit will be conducted by an independent international firm brought in specifically for this purpose. 

New Regulations for Moldovan Flagged Ships

This week amendments on the national maritime code were approved in Parliament that would restrict the issuing of Moldovan flags to vessels that pass EU accredited safety inspections. Currently, Moldova issues the right to flag a ship as Moldovan pretty much without question which has resulted in a number of scandals including the fact that the ship that blew up the port of Beirut was Moldovan flagged. The new bill will require certification by EU accredited inspection companies for all Moldovan flags issued.  

Balti Mayoral Election

Last week, we left off with the fact that the Central Election Commission (CEC) had voted to remove Marian Tauber from the Balti mayoral race citing undeclared expenses. This needed to be approved by the courts and this week the Balti court ruled against Tauber confirming her removal from the mayoral race. Tauber and the Shor party then appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice which upheld the decision of the Balti court. 

Things pretty much went off the rails from there. 

The first problem was that the Balti court only ruled on this issue on December 4th, one day before the second round of the election was scheduled to occur. CEC rules and election law are clear that a candidate cannot be replaced on the ballot in this short of a timeframe and in any event the ballots were already printed and couldn’t be remade that quickly. Because of this problem with the timing the CEC decided to cancel the second round vote and postpone it until December 19th. Immediately this caused backlash from the Socialist party who say that the CEC has no right to cancel an election at all. It seems that they are right, PromoLex, Moldova’s premier election monitoring NGO confirmed in various opinion pieces written for the media that the CEC could not cancel an election. The NGO basically explained that there was a gap in the legislation that created an impasse. The election could not be held unless the candidate dropped out (or was removed) 7 days before the election. But the election cannot be canceled by the CEC. PromoLex said that in cases such as this the courts have to decide how to proceed, not the CEC. The CEC disagreed and the election was postponed. 

The drama was not finished however. Recall that the first round results were as follows:

• Marina Tauber (Shor Party) - 47.93%

• Nikolai Grigorishin (Independent Candidate - former Vice Mayor of Usati)- 20.93%

• Boris Markoch (PAS) - 14.08% 

• Alexandr Nesterovschi (Communist Socialist Block) - 14.08%

• Nicolae Chirilciuc (Patriots of Moldova Party) - 1.2%

Now, Boris Markoch of PAS and Alexandr Nesterovschi from the Communist Socialist Block tied by percentage, but Mr. Markoch got 2 more votes than Mr. Nesterovschi, putting him in the narrowest of second places. In theory then we should have had a matchup of Nikolai Grigorishin vs Boris Markoch on December 19th. 

However, shortly after the final court ruling, the PAS party chose to withdraw its candidate from the race entirely. This was done to avoid a perception that the CEC ruling was done for political reasons since the current composition of the CEC was appointed by the PAS parliamentary majority. 

Ok, then the next matchup would be Nikolai Grigorishin vs the Communist Socialist Block candidate Alexandr Nesterovschi. Nope. The Socialist party chose to withdraw their candidate from the race too in protest of the CEC’s “illegal” decision to remove Tauber and postpone the election from December 5th to December 19th. This move apparently surprised the Communist Party leader Mr. Voronin, who held a press conference to say that he was never consulted at all on the selection of a common candidate in the Communist and Socialist Block and if he had his way his candidates wouldn’t quit elections. 

Commenting on all of this Nikolai Grigorishin has stated that he is ready to go for the second round but noted that he has no idea who he will be running against. Mr. Grigorishin noted that while the PAS and Communist / Socialist candidates stated that they will withdraw neither has actually submitted any paperwork to officially withdraw. In the event that they do formalize their intentions Mr. Grigorishin will be running against the next runner up Nicolae Chirilciuc of the little known Patriots of Moldova Party who got a total of 416 votes in the election. 

As if this situation was not convoluted enough the CEC this week announced additional sanctions against the Shor Party. Specifically, the CEC announced that in it’s investigation of the Balti mayoral elections it found additional serious violations in campaign spending. Multiple musical artists who were hired by Tauber for campaign events were recorded as receiving payments much smaller than the fees these artists advertise publically. The Shor party was invited to explain this discrepancy but chose not to respond. This led the CEC to withdraw all state financing for the Shor party for a year as punishment. 

As a final note to this situation, Parliamentary Speaker Grosu gave a press conference this week where he alleged that during this whole mess of a process Shor party representatives offered large cash bribes both to CEC members and to judges in the Balti court in order to sway decisions in their favor. Grosu cannot say the amounts on offer as there is an ongoing investigation but he said they were very large sums of money. Tauber and the Shor party deny these allegations. 

Wow, so what is going on in Balti? All told it looks like the CEC’s attempts to police the election for illicit spending gas resulted in quite a lot of second order effects. We’ll have to see how how this plays out in the next week to figure out just who will be in the second round of elections. 

COVID-19 Update

COVID rates continue to fall with a 7 day average of 476 cases and 22 deaths per day over the last week. As you can see from the charts we are well on our way our of this 3rd wave. Let’s hope this continues and we can retire these charts again (hopefully for good).

Update on Vaccinations

This week the Ministry of Health announced that nationwide Moldova has 28% of the population who are fully vaccinated (though the number is likely higher when counting vaccines that were taken outside Moldova). Regionally Chisinau has the highest vaccination rate at 41% and Gagauzia the lowest at 17%. The town with the highest vaccination rate is Stauceni, a Chisinau suburb which has an impressive 68% vaccination rate. This fact led to Prime Minister Gavrilita visiting the suburb and saying “When I found out that the highest level of vaccination was registered in Stavcheny, I really wanted to come personally and congratulate you.” This was part of various appeals made by the Prime Minister and President in past weeks encouraging people to get vaccinated and attempting to break down vaccine hesitancy. 

The Ministry also noted that boosters are beginning to roll out to medical workers, people over 60, people at high risk, social workers and education workers. It remains unclear if the authorities are allowing people to pick their booster in a mix-and-match scheme, or if you are required to get boosted with the same vaccine you had previously. 

Finally, the Ministry of Health this week commented on vaccine tourism in Moldova. Specifically, since the middle of November non-citizens without residence permits have been blocked from getting vaccines. Apparently until this decision was made 15-20 vaccine tourists a day were getting shots in Moldova with 90% of the foreigners coming from Russia. 

Crime and Corruption

Ghenadie Tanas, director of Criminal Prosecution of the National Center for Combating Corruption (NCBK) was arrested this week for illegal enrichment. Searches were conducted at this home and family member’s homes by SIS and Anti Corruption Prosecutors. Previously Mr. Tanas was a subject of ZdG investigations that showed his ownership of large plots of land and various properties in the city. Apparently he is also known to lend large sums of money to people and demand payment of debts in court when the borrowers fail to pay. This all created quite a paper trail for his wealth and journalists noted that his car alone costs more than his yearly salary. 

Ending on a High Note!

This week’s high note comes in the form of Moldova getting a fair amount of attention internationally thanks to President Maia Sandu. Firstly, President Sandu was included in Politico’s 2022 “Most Influential People in Europe” list. She was put in the category of “Dreamers” with the subtitle “ the tightrope walker" alluding to her tightrope walk between managing pro-EU reforms while maintaining productive relations with Russia.

In additional news this week, President Sandu spoke at the Summit for Democracies hosted by President Biden. She sent a video message describing Moldova’s efforts to combat corruption and build up strong democratic institutions. In the video, which you can watch online (in English) President Sandu spoke about the “democratic recession deepening around the world” and the critical need for global solidarity and leadership to strengthen democracy. Moldova stands as one of the few regional examples of positive steps away from authoritarianism and towards stronger democracy and President Sandu’s representation of the country at these events allows Moldova to have some rare moments in the spotlight. 

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