Weekly Roundup

March 27 - April 2

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!

This week, we have a longer than usual roundup covering a large variety of important news. We try and keep things short and to the point at Moldova Matters but this has been a crazy week and even many stories that didn’t make the cut for this newsletter warrant attention. So bear with me, I promise it’s worth it…

Political Crisis - Now Officially a “National Emergency”

In the last Weekly Roundup, we went through the conditions required for early elections and looked ahead to President Sandu conducting constitutionally mandated “consultations” with the various parties on the holding of elections. These consultations occurred in the first days of the week and President Sandu notified the Constitutional Court that all conditions had been met for early elections and that the Parliament needed to be dissolved. In the vein of the “hurry up and wait” nature of this crisis we thought that the next step would be to see what the Constitutional Court ruled. But not so! 

A State of National Emergency - wait, what?!

On March 31st, the Socialist Party, backed by the Interim Government proposed a declaration of a State of Emergency due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The State of Emergency was proposed to last from April 1 to May 30. Recall that Moldova was in a state of emergency during the first arrival of COVID a year ago but transitioned from a “State of Emergency” to a “State of Health Emergency” in June 2020. The actual legal basis for a “State of Health Emergency” was always murky, but it was designed to empower the Government to create restrictions and take preventative pandemic related decisions without existing in a permanent “State of Emergency.”

Confused yet? Just wait...

During the Parliamentary debate about the introduction of the State of Emergency, there were many questions from the opposition PAS Party as well as others to the Interim Prime Minister about what new restrictions would this State of Emergency entail? And what powers did the Interim Government need that it did not have? The Interim Prime Minister assured all parties that there would be no lockdown nor additional restrictions or really any changes at all to what is going on now. This prompted multiple MPs to demand that the Interim Government present their plan associated with the state of emergency. This elicited the memorable response “we do not have a plan. And we should remember that it was having too many plans that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union!”

...But Mr. Dodon Has a Plan

President Sandu, Members of the Opposition, Mr. Dodon himself and pretty much the whole internet quickly noted that under the Constitution, there can be no elections during a State of Emergency. President Sandu and others quickly noted that this “emergency with neither changes nor plans” is simply a ploy to avoid early elections and lock-in the current Interim Government appointed by Mr. Dodon last year. Under this scheme, the Interim Government will continue to act until May 30th after which it is not clear what will happen. In theory, the Socialists can prolong the State of Emergency as long as they have the votes in Parliament and the Constitutional Court allows it. Alternatively, Mr. Dodon may think that elections are advantageous then and schedule them for sometime in the fall. In the meantime, President Sandu is considering appealing this State of Emergency to the Constitutional Court. 

Meanwhile, following the conclusion of the Parliamentary debate Mr. Dodon announced he is off to Moscow for important meetings. Clearly indicating that a State of Emergency does not much get in the way of geopolitics. 

Ok, so things are just frozen? Did anything really change except that nothing is changing?

Basically, yes. For the moment we are waiting on the Constitutional Court to rule on President Sandu’s dismissal of Parliament. Since conditions have changed it’s not clear what that ruling would mean now. In terms of lockdowns and restrictions nothing is set to change right now, except that President Sandu has ordered the Army activated to assist in monitoring compliance with restrictions already in place. This change occurred the day before (and unrelated to) the creation of a formal State of Emergency and basically returns us to March 2020 where military personnel assisted the Police and Carabinieri on foot patrols. 

Back to March 2020…  how fun. 

Politics and Elections - New Parties are Sprouting Like Mushrooms

While it seems elections are likely to be delayed, various factions are already lining up to try and convince voters to support them. In a typical Moldovan Election where you are voting in a “Party List” system a ballot will have up to 60 parties on it (the ballots are quite long). We will certainly not discuss every new political formation at Moldova Matters but we will highlight some new ones that have a chance of impacting the conversation. Here are 2 parties formed this week that we should keep an eye on. 

Party for the Development and Consolidation of Moldova (PDCM)

Former Prime Minister Ion Chicu has announced the creation of a new Party in a rather unusual way. His social media posts and press releases were done after midnight around 3 AM. This generated lots of humorous buzz around his announcement, but not much of it positive. Mr. Chicu claims that the main goal of his new party is European Integration for Moldova, a highly suspicious claim from a man who made his career as an advisor to President Dodon and then a Prime Minister for the Socialists and a passionately anti-EU former President. Talk quickly consolidated around the idea that this is a “spoiler party” conceived by Mr. Dodon in order to siphon votes away from his opponents. This suspicion grew further when Mr. Dodon announced that he would be happy to form a coalition with this new party in the next Parliament even as he admitted they do not believe in the same things whatsoever. 

AUR - Alliance of Unionists party formed

On the March 27th, 103rd anniversary of the Union of Bessarabia (current Moldova) with Romania the AUR Party was formed as an offshoot of the Romanian AUR Party. In Moldova this party will seek to consolidate the fractured Unionist vote in order to create a united political movement advocating for the union of Moldova and Romania. In Romania, the AUR Party stunned observers at the last elections by getting 9% of the vote and becoming the 4th largest Parliamentary block. The party is considered to be a right wing, nationalist formation with 4 stated political pillars of "family, nation, Christian faith, and liberty." The party founder has openly expressed admiration for the Law and Justice party in Poland as one of his inspirations. It remains to be seen how much impact the AUR party will have, but the Unionist vote has been very fractured since the demise of the Liberal Party and AUR could prove to be a major bellwether on the salience of the Union issue. This is one of the most hot button issues in Moldovan politics. 

Economics - Bread Riots at the Port?

Well, more like protests. But a new and rather confusing political fight emerged this week about the export of grain from the national reserves. President Sandu called for a halting of exporting wheat from the state emergency reserves citing the previous drought conditions and precarious situation in the agriculture sector. The Ministry of Agriculture said there is no issue and they should keep exporting, but protests at the port of Gurgulesti broke out attempting to stop trucks from loading grain onto ships. After much public debate, the relevant authorities agreed to halt the export of grain for 12 days. 

Ok, what was this about?

It seems that the core issue here is one of more technical policy than simply “does or doesn’t Moldova have food.” The state grain reserve naturally stores products with a limited shelf life. Once grain is coming up on expiration it must be sold and replaced with fresh stock. In this case, the Ministry decided to sell the grain to the highest bidder - a company seeking to export the grain. Members of President Sandu’s party have said that this is bad policy. Moldova has seen a spike in bread prices due to the drought and COVID Crisis and they argue that this grain should be sold onto the Moldovan market in order to drive prices down. Therefore, the people get the most benefit from what is their grain at the cost of a small amount of Government revenue. 

While this was a sensational story in the press and a less sensational one in technical details it does highlight a very important fact. Many government actions in Moldova are motivated very directly by money - the “budget” as they say. Strategic reserves, for example the US Strategic Oil Reserve, are for regulating the markets and prices - not profits. Short term cash flow for the government regularly trumps policies with long term economic and social benefits.

COVID-19 - the Pandemic is Not Scared of the State of Emergency

As we are getting used to saying every week at Moldova Matters, the pandemic crisis is getting worse by the day. Last week Moldova averaged over 1450 new cases and 43 deaths daily. Both numbers are records and represent unsustainable pressure for the health system. Much was made about the fact that Moldova has officially marked over 4900 total deaths surpassing China’s 4600 deaths during the pandemic.  A sobering fact for such a small country. 

In positive news, the vaccination program is starting to hit key benchmarks. Moldova has announced that 52% of all doctors have been vaccinated and that the country is already moving to Phase 2 in which all people over 65 and some with medical conditions are able to get the vaccine. Meanwhile, 100,000 doses of Pfizer are expected by the end of July and the Government is preparing mass vaccination centers in keeping with best practices in Europe and the US not to put too much pressure on hospitals to give the vaccine. Additionally President Sandu has appealed directly to President Putin for assistance in getting the Sputnik V vaccine. Russia’s reply was something along the lines of “we’ll think about it.” But by the end of the week Mr. Dodon flew to Moscow to announce that Russia will be sending 180,000 doses of Sputnik in the coming week as humanitarian aid. It seems that Russia is careful to allow their man in Chisinau to take credit. 

New Restrictions

After his “we have no plan on beating the pandemic because plans caused the Soviet Union to Collapse” line fully sunk in on social media, the Interim Prime Minister apparently decided they needed a plan. Friday morning new restrictions were announced including…

• 11 pm - 5 am curfew in Chisinau and Balti - residents must stay home

• Reopening of Kindergartens / daycares (yes, opening not closing)

• Closing of parks, sports and playgrounds

• Companies will be required to have no more than 30% of employees in the office at any time

• Utilities are prohibited from cutting off gas or electric if individuals don’t pay

As previously noted, none of these restrictions clearly require a “State of Emergency” and could have been implemented last week under the “State of Health Emergency.” The only real restriction inherent in the State of Emergency is a restriction against elections. 

Vaccines and Corruption

Sadly, abuses of power and corrupt selling of vaccines has already started in Moldova. Cases in Edient and Cantimir have highlighted the fact that politicians and their families are being vaccinated out of line and in some cases before doctors are offered the shot. This is extending into Parliament as at least one MP from the Democratic Party got vaccinated along with the members of the city council of his district. In shockingly brazen form, most of these abuses of power were “discovered” because the politicians proudly posted their vaccine certificats on the town’s social media pages! They claim that it was better to use them than to throw them away and taking the vaccines themselves or for their family is totally appropriate. Sometimes it is shocking to remember that corruption and abuse of power are so ingrained in the system that those perpetrating crimes and immoral actions don’t even understand the criticism. 

One politician did however. Winning the award for most bumbling vaccine crook of the week, District Councilor Sergei Renza of “Our Party” posted his vaccine certificate online but quickly updated the post saying that he got it in Romania as a Romanian citizen and he did not abuse his power at all. Online super sleuths quickly noted that it was odd for Romanian authorities to give out Russian Language vaccine cards. Responding to this glaring hole in his story, Councilor Renza apologized for lying, said he did indeed get vaccinated in Moldova (along with other politicians) but noted that he “totally 100% did not pay for it.” Naturally, why wouldn’t we believe him?

Seemingly, to make up for this embarrassment to “Our Party,” the leader of the Party Renato Usati released information he says indicates corruption and line cutting in Balti.  Usati calls for an investigation and is positioning himself as someone who believes in fairness. This lacks some credibility from the man who unabashedly spent a small fortune to fly to the United Arab Emirates to vaccinate himself a few weeks ago. In Usati’s report it says that “bloggers” are being vaccinated in Balti. I wonder if this author qualifies?

Corruption - are We Seeing a Spike in Raider Attacks?

A few weeks ago, we discussed the ongoing raider attack at the port of Gurgulesti in our Weekly Roundup. This week, businessman Vladimir Rusu of the Accent Group of Companies announced that he was also the subject of an attack in which 2 office buildings that he owned were stolen. Mr. Rusu laid out the story in a long press conference and many details were later confirmed by independent reporting. Mr. Rusu claims that he owned 2 buildings in the Chisinau city center where, late last week, security personnel entered the buildings and told all the occupants that they must leave. Notorious “businessman” Veaceslav Platon (recently released from prison - and still being tried for other crimes) is behind the seizure which was conducted by a court order at which Mr. Rusu and his company were not present to defend themselves. On further application to the court for information Mr. Rusu and his lawyers claim they have still not seen the case or any evidence. The buildings now officially belong to a company associated with Platon and Ilan Shor which was mentioned in the Kroll report associated with the Theft of the Billion. This whole situation is complicated by the fact that these buildings have changed hands many times and Mr. Platon claims that they were really his, stolen by Plahotnuic, and then sold to Rusu. The facts of the case are likely to untangle somewhat over time and remain murky, but this does have the hallmarks of a “raider attack” where the courts are used in opaque ways to transfer wealth or goods from one party to another without provisions for an adequate legal defense. 

Ending on a High Note!

At Moldova Matters we have been covering crisis after crisis and more than a few cases of corruption. This doom and gloom reflects Moldova’s news stories in Spring 2021 but there are good stories too! So from now on, we will be ending on a high note with a fun or positive story from around Moldova. 

This week, Moldovan athletes Ștefan Roșca and Denis Raiul won the gold and bronze medals respectively, at the Paralympic World Weightlifting Cup in Manchester UK! Posting about the win, Rosca wrote "What does not bring you down makes you stronger! We have proved once again that we, Moldovans, are like Gladiators - in the most difficult conditions, in the most difficult situations, we bring medals and the country's anthem resounds at the highest level competitions. I truly thank those close to me, my family and friends who have been with me all this time! ”