Weekly Roundup

December 11 - December 18

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 the PAS ruling party and Government received a sort of report card on their performance from a major yearly poll conducted by the International Republican Institute IRI. The poll results were released this week but reflect polling conducted from September 16 to November 1. Here are some of the major takeaways. 

Politicians and Parties with the Highest Trust in Society

Respondents were asked to pick from a slate of politicians which one they trust the most. In the poll President Sandu led with 27% followed by Igor Dodon at 14%. Next up were Parliamentary Speaker Igor Grusu and Vladimir Voronin both tied at 7% and Prime Minister Gavrilita at 5%. These numbers show a 1 year gain of 9% points for President Sandu and a 1% point loss for Mr. Dodon. 

In terms of parties, the PAS Party got 36% of support followed by the Socialists at 14%, theCommunists at 5% and the Shor party at 3%. When compared with polling from the Barometer of Public Opinion conducted in July we can see PAS is down 7.5% since that time and Shor down 4.8%. The July poll joined the Socialists and Communists since they were running as a block at that time so we can’t compare their numbers. 

So What does this Mean? 

On face value it shows that President Sandu continues to maintain a very high support in society either because of her own popularity or because of a lack of credible alternatives. But PAS is slipping in support now that they are in charge of parliament and the government and actually wielding power. Most critically, this poll was conducted before heightened gas prices and other crises and mini-crises of the last month. As such it’s possible that the numbers don’t fully reflect the dissatisfaction in society with the economic situation which is growing. One thing is for sure, now that PAS is in power people are looking for concrete results and the government is going to have to deliver to bring their numbers back up. Polls like this are not conducted very frequently in Moldova so a month to month approval rating isn’t possible here. So we will have to check in every time there is a strong poll out to see how things have progressed in the elapsed time. 

This Week in Parliament

Parliament this week has continued grappling with their draft law on raising the salaries of judges in the nation's highest courts. As we discussed last week these salaries were set to more than double under the draft law. This week, President Sandu returned the law to parliament without signing it citing procedural violations. The problem was that the government had not given a positive opinion on the law and the President returned it to parliament for consultations with the government. Speaking for the parliament, and addressing the uproad that the proposal to create such high salaries for judges created, Speaker Grosu said that they are working with the government but are in “no rush.” He said that the law will be revised in such a way that salaries are increased but not doubled as previously planned. 

Meanwhile, PAS MPs Dorian Istratii and Dumitru Alaiba presented a bill in parliament on regulating Microfinance institutions. These non-bank lenders have been accused of operating in a predatory fashion and until now have little to no oversight under the law. The proposed regulations would set out minimum standards for loans and for the evaluation of the creditworthiness of borrowers. The bill’s authors discussed how loans currently are misleading and that the new bill will require clear statements of interest rates and payments. They will also ban floating interest rates in microloans of values under 3 average salaries (around 21,000 MDL or ($1200). They noted cases where people borrow 5000 lei but are required to pay hundreds of thousands of lei over the lifespan of the loan. MP Alaiba noted that these loans cause tragedies where people lose everything they have and has caused an uptick in suicides. The new bill will cap loans at 50% maximum interest and 0.04% maximum service fees. Taken together small loan repayments cannot exceed double the original amount. If someone borrows 5,000 lei, they will not have to repay more than 10,000 lei by law. 

It’s worth noting that in Moldova predatory lending can come from banks just as well as microfinance institutions. The Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance (full disclosure the author is the President of that organization) has proposed a “Borrowers Bill of Rights” to address systemic issues in lenders communicating the actual interest rates and terms of such loans. What’s important in this is that if businesses dealing with banks cannot always get transparent treatment, there is little hope for low paid workers taking unregulated “payday” style loans from these microfinance institutions. These reforms, which are hopefully just the beginning, will start to bring some transparency and fairness to this sector. 

Justice Reform - The Saga of the Prosecutor General Continues

On December 13th the Venice Commission (VC) came out with official recommendations for Moldova on the new law on evaluating and removing the Prosecutor General. In their report they called on Moldova to “fundamentally revise” this process saying the mechanism of evaluating a Prosecutor General is quote  "very unusual for Europe." The criticisms focused on the lack of transparent public consultations during the passage of the law and the lack of clear criteria for how the Prosecutor General will be evaluated. Furthermore, the VC noted the retroactive nature of the law, saying that the criteria for the evaluation were not in effect when the Prosecutor General was appointed and therefore can’t be used to evaluate his work now. There were a number of other technical disputes as well. 

Moldovan authorities responded to the “unusual nature of the law” saying that it was inspired by similar laws in Romania… to which the VC noted that they don’t like those laws either. As to public consultations this issue was previously addressed by the Supreme Court of Justice which ruled that while it was not very good that they didn’t consult the law publicly before passing it in the first reading, parliament did have consultations before the second vote and therefore satisfied the legal criteria for consultations. 

Responding to the VC report the Minister of Justice said that they would "consider" all the VC's recommendations but noted that Moldova cannot be compared to other European countries since the state institutions were so recently captured by oligarchic groups. 

American readers will likely note that this entire controversy would be moot in the US where the President can fire the Attorney General more or less anytime he wants. Something that did not prove to be a problem in most of US history but has come under considerable scrutiny after the rollercoaster of the Trump years. 

Rapid Fire Updates

In order to keep updated with some important happenings that don’t warrant a more complex writeup we’re introducing the “Rapid Fire Updates” section! Here we’ll check in with stories we’ve previously covered in the politics section and see where they went this week. 

• Balti Mayoral Election - ballots are finally being printed for the contest. Independent candidate Nikolai Grigorishin will face off against Nikolai Chirilchuk of the tiny Patriots of Moldova Party in this weekend's vote after all the other candidates were disqualified or dropped out. 

• Gas Crisis - The government announced that Moldova is working to connect to the European electricity market as an energy security and diversification measure. This could be completed as soon as 2023. 

• Transnistrian Elections - The leader of the breakaway region was “re-elected” last week in a vote that was not recognized by Chisinau. Moldova previously demanded that no officials from other countries recognize these elections by sending observers. Russia did send a number of observers who were mostly intercepted at the airport and put on planes back to Russia. Transnistria called this strategy of turning observers away “hostile” and said they will complain in the format of the 5+2 talks. It’s worth noting that some observers from the Russian Embassy were joined by senior Socialist Party officials in observing the elections. Something that did not go unnoticed in society as it implied a recognition of the elections themselves by a major Moldovan political party. 

Foreign Affairs

This week President Sandu was at the European Union’s Eastern Partnership Conference where she reaffirmed Moldova’s EU aspirations and asked for continued support as Moldova seeks to clean up it’s own house and position itself for EU members. The conference comes against the backdrop of escalating regional tensions with the threatened Russian invasion of Ukraine and as such most statements from the event revolved around the EU’s support for it’s eastern partner nations. 

Meanwhile, a consignment of non-lethal military equipment arrived in Chisinau donated from the US government inthe context of these tensions. More is due by the end of the year. 

We will take a deep dive into these regional tensions and their implications for Moldova in a subscriber article next week. 

COVID-19 Update - Omicron is Coming

This week the 7 day average for daily new cases and deaths stand at 416 and 19 respectively. This shows a slight decline from last week to around where Moldova was in October during the beginning of the Delta surge. 

Unfortunately, there is little prospect for this decline to continue as it becomes clearer that Moldova is likely to move pretty directly from a delta driven wave to an omicron driven wave in the coming months. Romania is already reporting an uptick in cases driven by omicron and past experience has shown Moldova to follow quickly on the heels of Romanian trends. 

The National Emergency Commission for Public Health is considering new measures to protect against this wave. Primarily they are discussing making vaccination certificates mandatory in restaurants and events regardless of the Green / Yellow / Orange / Red code status of a location. They are also considering issuing border restrictions around the holidays but did not preview what they may look like. 

It is worth noting that anyone living in Chisinau knows that these vaccination certificate requirements are hardly functioning in practice. In my own experience of the past weeks only around ⅓ restaurants require certificates at all. It would surprise no one if this lack of compliance with the regulations was even more pronounced outside of the capital. As a well known saying goes “it’s very good that Moldova has good laws. It’s not so good that they are optional.”

Vaccine Update - Boosters for All

The Ministry of Health this week approved booster shots for all citizens and residents over 18 years old. Anyone who got their 2nd shot more than 6 months ago (2 months for J&J) can go to their family doctor or a vaccination center and get a booster. Over 35,000 people have already gotten boosters in the early priority regime in Moldova. Frustratingly, there is no reporting right now on whether or not people are allowed to mix and match their booster shots or if they are required to get boosted with the same vaccine as their original shots. If any readers have personal experience with their family doctors on their front please share in the comments. 

Speaking to the broader vaccination situation in Moldova the Minister of Health noted that Moldova sits between 2 waves and that it is critical for everyone to get vaccinated. She explained that while Moldova has 8-10 times lower infection rates than most of the EU, we have 4-5 times higher mortality rates right now due to the country’s abysmally low 30% vaccination rate. Commenting on the situation she said “Vaccines are an umbrella that we are not opening even though it is raining outside.”

A Scandal on Expired Vaccines?

Meanwhile, the state Accounts Chamber has reported on an auditing process they conducted on the vaccine rollout in Moldova. In particular they noted the following problems and irregularities: 

• Around 2500 people were vaccinated out of turn (before their category was supposed to get the shot)

• Around 11,000 vaccines expired while sitting on shelves and were thrown away

• 7000 persons received expired vaccines. The Accounts chamber notes this is a suspicious number and implies it could be related to people getting “vaccines in the sink” (aka fake certificates)

• 71,000 vaccine certificates are “suspicious” and may be fraudulent

The Ministry of Health strongly disagreed with the most shocking element of this report that some people got expired vaccines. The Minister said that the audit was conducted from May 30th to August 31st during a time where there were limited technical systems for tracking this process. She said that not one single person received an expired dose in reality. On the other hand she noted that the questions about people getting fake certificates are real and that they are working with law enforcement on this issue now. 

Crime and Corruption

This week acting Prosecutor General Robu forwarded 9 requests for the arrest of Ilan Shor to Parliament so that deputies could consider lifting his parliamentary immunity. The charges involved 3 for fraude, 2 for money laundering, and others related to the creation of a criminal organization and for abuse of power. 

Commenting on this process the top Shor Party official in Moldova Marina Tauber said that this was all revenge for how popular Shor is with the people (something not borne out by the aforementioned IRI poll). Mr. Shor himself responded with a video message that resembled something a supervillain might put out. First he discussed how he laughed hysterically at this presentation to parliament before going on to call President Sandu “Hitler” multiple times. He threatened street protests and noted that he would win in the end and that "the one who laughs last laughs well."

Meanwhile, parliament considered these charges behind closed doors in the legal committee and will present a recommendation to the full body on December 23rd. 

Alleged Bribery of MPs

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office opened a case this week against former Democratic Party (PD) MP Sergei Sirbu. He is accused of corruption in offering bribes to MPs of factions in opposition to Mr. Plahotnuic’s rule in 2015. These bribes were between 100,000 and 200,000 euros each and would be given if MPs changed their party to PD. Allegations of attempted bribery of MPs like this is not new with Mr. Voronin accusing Mr. Sirbu of these attempts publicly in the past. Almost certainly some bribes were taken as many many MPs in those years did change parties to align with Plahotniuc. 

Ending on a High Note!

Chisinau has a new tourism promotion website visit.Chisinau.md! The site works in multiple languages (including English) and identifies for visitors the top sights that the capital has to offer. It outlines restaurants and places to stay as well. It’s unlikely the site will be more helpful than google or Tripadvisor for tourists but it does show a real effort underway in Moldova to try and attract tourism into the economy. In terms of historical sites there is a lot of information you won’t find in English on google so the site could be a nice resource for people wanting to learn more about the city’s history!

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!