Yearly Roundup - 2021 in Review
2021 was a busy year in Moldova!
Well, we’ve come to the end of 2021 and what a year it has been. We’re once again taking a break from the Weekly Roundup format to take a short look at the past year and to try and look ahead to 2022. These past 2 weeks have been fairly slow as most of the country prepares for the holidays and hunkers down amidst a rare December snowfall across Moldova. At the same time, there have been a few stories that are of national importance so we’ll weave them into our look back at this year and see what direction events may take in the new year.
So What is the Story of 2021?
Most often we don’t think of the news as “a story” but as a series of interweaving and often unconnected events that drive our daily lives. Trying to find an overall narrative is somewhat hopeless in light of the chaos of day to day life, but we will try and suss out just what happened in Moldova this year in a big picture way. To do that, we should start with December 24th 2020, Christmas eve for those in the west. In Moldova this was the inauguration day of President Maia Sandu after her defeat of former President Igor Dodon in the November 2020 election. Politically speaking this was the event that laid the groundwork for all the events set to unfold in the past year. The first Moldova Matters Weekly Roundup went out on February 19th and focused closely on the looming showdown between President Sandu and her rival Mr. Dodon on the issue of early Parliamentary elections. This issue would come to dominate the first half of 2021 and led to our first “Explainer” article where we took a close look at just how Moldova’s Government works. Beyond the mechanics of elections and the separation of powers we looked at some of the peculiar facets of Moldovan government that eventually helped drive the crisis in the spring. Particularly, the fact that Moldova’s Executive Branch does not require ministers, or even the Prime Minister to have been members of parliament or even elected at all! This unelected status for Prime Minister Chicu and his interim successors over the spring helped drive the coming constitutional crisis because the newly elected President, in spite of having few constitutional powers, was the only person on the national stage with a real mandate from the people. A political reality President Sandu deftly wielded in concert with her minor constitutional powers throughout the spring.
And what a spring it was! The tug of war between President Sandu’s attempts to appoint a reformist Prime Minister from her former PAS party, and the Socialist Party led by Mr. Dodon’s attempts to hold power through ever stranger coalitions with Plahotnuic’s Democrats and even the Shor party erupted into a full blown constitutional crisis by April. Briefly there were multiple constitutional court judges backed by different factions all claiming legitimacy. President Sandu called a meeting of the Supreme Security Council and made statements to the police and army ordering them to respect the constitution and not follow illegal orders. This had all the makings of quite a crisis but quickly the Socialists realized they had overstepped and backed down. The result was the success of the President’s drive for early elections and a major PAS victory in July where the party won an outright majority of 63 seats in the nation's 101 seat legislative body. This set up the second half of our year as PAS, led by the new Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita and President Sandu assumed executive power and began to try and implement the sweeping reforms promised in their election campaign.
During all of these major political events, Moldova Matters also took a look at various political and economic realities in Moldova and tried to shed some light on the underlying realities and complexities of life here. We asked the question “what is the Moldovan stock market and how does it work?” (or not work). We examined the role of vaccine diplomacy in helping Moldova assure a full vaccination supply for citizens by summer. We looked at the role of limited liability companies and offshoring in the economy and asked hard political questions such as “does Moldova really have right and left wing political parties?” All of these topics showed that while following the news is important to understanding Moldova, it’s also critical to dive deep into the economic, structural and cultural realities that underlie daily life and drive both policy and decision making.
Once the election was done 2021 became all about the PAS party’s ability to affect the reforms they promised during the campaign. This began with taking a look at the staffing decisions made by the parliament and government as they sought to prepare the ministries and bureaucracy for this work. Speaking just this week President Sandu has acknowledged that this is still the main challenge in front of reform as the year ends. She notes that reforms are only possible with highly qualified staff and leadership and noted that with 25% of Moldova’s working age population abroad it has been harder than they imagined to find and retain talent to the government. We can expect this issue to be a major issue into 2022 as the government continues to seek out new talent.
Meanwhile, as the PAS team settled into their work the focus was swiftly put on justice reform. This has led to section after section in the Weekly Roundup about the struggle to suspend and replace the Prosecutor General still warming his chair after being appointed by the Socialists in 2019. This has proved one of the more controversial fights of the fall as maneuvering and criminal cases flew back and forth eventually leading the Prosecutor General to be temporarily suspended pending criminal charges as well as an evaluation of his work set out in the new law on the Prosecutor General. For many this seemed like political theater and both sides pointed at the other as a breaker of norms or even laws in this process. More tangibly though we have seen investigation after investigation opened by the interim prosecutor general once he took over into corrupt officials, judges, and even this week Mr. Dodon himself. The Prosecutor General summoned Mr. Dodon for questioning in a case regarding the state’s purchase of electricity through Energocom. This case was from 2008 when Mr. Dodon was the Minister of Economy. At that time, he is alleged to have facilitated middle man contracts for the purchase of electricity from Transnistria. The scheme worked like this, instead of Moldova directly buying electricity from a utility company, a shell company was set up in the middle of the transaction. It purchased power and then sold it right on to the state with a healthy markup for the zero work they did. Over one year this netted a healthy profit (embezzlement) of around $12 million dollars which was shuttled into offshore anonymous shell companies and vanished. This week Mr. Dodon went in for questioning where he asserted his innocence and declared he would fight all charges in court. Following this, the Prosecutor General announced that Mr. Dodon is indeed a suspect in this scheme and the investigation is ongoing. This year's ending news on the anti-corruption front is a serious indicator on the way things are likely to move in 2022. From one perspective, supporters of the PAS government will say that this is a sign that under a fair justice system no one is above the law and people will be held to account for past crimes. Meanwhile, the Socialists claim this is political theater and PAS persecuting their primary political opponents. We will likely hear much more of this debate in 2022.
Economically speaking we have seen PAS take some first steps on digitalization and simplifying processes for people and companies. The government managed to raise pensions to a minimum of 2000 lei per month which fulfilled a key campaign promise. But big economic reforms have yet to materialize and it seems that staffing concerns as well as the sudden energy crisis this fall kept the government busy but somewhat stuck in place. Russia reminded Moldova and the EU that anytime it wants to derail an agenda and put the spotlight firmly on itself - it can.
From a foreign policy perspective, Moldova has focused squarely on resetting relations with the EU and bilateral partners and in the process secured much needed investment and credit to fund the government and make space for reforms. We’ll have to see how they use this space they have bought in 2022.
Meanwhile, we can also look back on the year at the politicians that have left the spotlight and slowly dropped out of our newsletter. Former Balti Mayor Usatti left politics and largely vanished from social media. Former Chisinau Mayor Chirtoaca retired from politics as well. Both figures suffered crushing defeats in the parliamentary elections and seem to have moved on to other pursuits… for now. Many other politicians fled the country after the elections with MPs from Plahotnuic’s Democratic Party and other smaller parties in the wind as criminal cases are opened against them for all manner of money laundering and corruption offenses. All of this is not to mention Mr. Shor’s continued hiding out in Israel and Mr. Plahotnuic being well… somewhere in the world.
In the wake of Mr. Usatii’s departure, the very strange Balti Mayoral elections finally wrapped up last week with Independent candidate Nicolai Grigorișin winning with 84.77% of the vote in the second round. Turnout was critically low at just 9.98% (representing just 10,209 persons in a city of over 145,000) reflecting the anger or apathy at three of the top 4 candidates being disqualified or bowing out in protest of various things. Speaking of his election, and inadvertently summing up 2021, Mr. Grigorishin simply said "thank god it's over."
And with that we too will wrap up our look back at 2021 and look forward to 2022. What will the year bring? What challenges for Moldova lie ahead? Certainly in the short term we are looking at the situation in Ukraine very closely to get an idea of just how volatile the neighborhood might be next year. Longer term though we have to ask the following questions: “will PAS be able to deliver on its reforms?” “If they do, will people love or hate them for it?” “The political opposition right now is in a sorry state… will they find their feet in 2022?” “With inflation predicted in double digits next year what kind of economic volatility can we expect?”
These questions, and probably many many more, we will seek to answer as the next year unfolds. In the meantime, Happy New Years to all the Moldova Matters readers. We’ll see you back in 2022.
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