Moldova politics: Following Ukraine?

Moldova's ruling communists, recent converts to a pro-EU policy, have won the parliamentary election. Yet they will need to cut a power-sharing deal in order to avoid fresh elections and they lack both the resources and the political convictions to follow Ukraine's determined turn to the West. Indeed, after four years of relative stability, Moldova's political climate may turn stormy once again.

The ruling Communist Party of Moldova (CPM) emerged victorious from the March 6th parliamentary election. Preliminary results from election officials show the CPM winning 46% of the vote, well ahead of its main challenger, the centrist Democratic Moldova Bloc (DMB), which won 29%. The right-wing Christian Democratic Popular Party (CDPP), which won 10% of the vote, was the only other group to surpass the minimum vote threshold required to enter parliament. According to unofficial calculations, these shares translate into 55, 35 and 11 seats in the 101-seat parliament.

The CPM's projected 55 seats are not sufficient to re-elect its leader, Vladimir Voronin, as Moldova's president. Under the Moldovan constitution, this is done through a qualified majority vote in parliament, with a minimum of 61 votes needed. The CPM is almost certain to fall short of this number, and so it now has 45 days to strike a deal with the centrist opposition to make up the difference, or else face fresh parliamentary elections. Some sort of deal to avoid this still seems to be the most likely outcome – but the opposition’s defiant rhetoric since voting day has raised the stakes.

The preliminary election results are largely in line with recent opinion polls and differ only moderately from exit polls – but most likely not enough to substantiate opposition claims of widespread vote rigging. Although international election observers voiced concerns over a number of shortcomings – including unequal campaign conditions and media access – they have declared the election to have generally complied with international election standards.

The CPM’s large vote share and the election observers’ general – albeit qualified – endorsement leaves Moldova’s main opposition groups with limited options. Some in the opposition had hoped to replicate the experience of their counterparts in neighbouring Ukraine, who had converted the government’s misconduct during and after the 2004 presidential election campaign into a country-wide uprising and ultimately a change in government. Hoping to do the same in Moldova, the CDPP had even changed its colours to orange in honour of the Ukrainian opposition’s campaign colours, and was planning to hold sustained public protest meetings in central Chisinau, the capital, beginning immediately after election day – once again, similar to the strategy adopted in Ukraine.

The fact that no significant protests have transpired since yesterday’s vote confirms that comparisons with Ukraine’s situation are far-fetched. Although the CDPP head, Iure Rosca, has suggested that his activists are merely still deciding on whether to protest, it is very unlikely that he will find sufficient appetite among the Moldovan public to recreate the Ukrainian experience.

Several differences with Ukraine stand out. Most importantly, the CPM and its leader, Mr Voronin, enjoy far more genuine and broadly-based support than did the ruling powers in Ukraine. Although the CPM’s recent performance in the election campaign confirmed its willingness to abuse state resources and its control of the media, it still knew it could win by far the largest share of the vote without the outright stuffing of ballot boxes that brought the Ukrainian public into the streets. The CPM knew that the opposition would have little success arguing that fraud cost it a victory, as its Ukrainian counterparts did so successfully, or in mobilising high-level international support.

Much of the opposition’s problem lies within. Most importantly, it lacks a widely popular leader able to mo bilise a large swathe of the population. This contrasts sharply with Ukraine, where the opposition leader – and now president – Viktor Yushchenko had long been Ukraine’s most popular political figure. The opposition in Moldova has also struggled to formulate a message that set it clearly apart from the ruling CPM. Over the last two years in particular, the CPM has successfully stolen much of the centre-right’s message of EU integration, co-operation with the multilaterals and economic reform.

With a Ukrainian scenario highly unlikely, the opposition’s only hope for unseating the CPM lies in obstructing parliament and forcing an immediate repeat election. This could be achieved if both the centrist DMB and right-wing CDPP put aside their differences long enough to boycott the new parliament’s attempts to elect a president over the next 45 days. As it is several votes short of the qualified majority needed in that election, the CPM would be forced, after three failed attempts, to accept a new election. The CDPP’s out-spoken leader, Iure Rosca, has already come out in favour of this strategy. The DMB’s more cautious leader, Serafim Urechean, has now also appeared to endorse it.

Yet such a course is risky for the opposition, as it could easily be blamed for the resulting surge in political turmoil which would in turn jeopardise Moldova’s fragile economic recovery. This would hardly endear the opposition to cautious Moldovan voters, who have only recently seen even moderate political and economic stability after years of post-Soviet upheaval. Much of the opposition’s lack of electoral success on March 6th was already due to public suspicions over the motivations of the opposition elites; an early election sparked by the opposition would only confirm this.

The CDPP, under Mr Rosca's leadership, might be willing to run these risks. Its core electorate and party structure are relatively consolidated, and it could plausibly expect to maintain its level of support in a repeat election. However, Mr Urechean, the head of the centrist DMB, is much more likely to balk. His electoral bloc still comes across as an uncomfortable alliance of former rivals and conflicting interests, and it would be likely to self-destruct even before the start of the repeat election campaign. Moreover, his supporters are far less committed than Mr Rosca’s, and it is conceivable that Mr Urechean would be punished by any overtly party political move to force a repeat election.

Knowing that their chances of coming out of a new election in an even weaker position are extremely high, at least parts of the DMB leadership are likely to try to strike a deal with the communists. A bargain should be possible, given the stated willingness of many DMB leaders – at least in the past – to work with the CPM in the new parliament. Most likely in this regard is a deal between the CPM and the former parliamentary speaker, Dumitru Diacov; his Democratic Party, a part of the DMB, has enough parliamentary seats to give the CPM the qualified majority it needs.

In many media reports, much has been made of the CPM's European vocation – and the result has been taken, in some quarters, as a sign that Moldova is "following" Ukraine's path to the EU. This exaggerates both the extent of the CPM's European vocation and its ability to act upon it.

The CPM's switch from a pro-Russian platform – the basis of its manifesto at the previous parliamentary election – to a pro-EU stance is the result of external factors rather than any deeply held convictions on the part of its leadership (in contrast with Ukraine). In particular, the CPM government has been greatly disappointed by Russia's failure to help Moldova sort out its territorial dispute with the breakaway region of Transnistria. The CPM hoped that its avowedly pro-Russian stance would, in turn, be rewarded by a more considerate and co-operative approach from Moscow. In practice Russian policy took little notice of the change of government in Chisinau and continued to treat the two parties more-or-less as equals. Moldova has thus turned to western states and institutions in the hope of making progress.

In addition, the Moldovan leadership is unhappy at being excluded from the Russian-inspired common economic space within the CIS. Taken together, these twin disappointments seem to have persuaded the CPM that there is virtually no benefit in aligning the country exclusively with Russia. Thus the CPM's rhetoric now focuses more on the west than the east, and its external policy now seeks a balance where previously it focused squarely on Russia.

Crucially, the CPM is not contemplating the kind of root-and-branch political and economic change that Mr Yushchenko is proposing for Ukraine. Moldova has made little progress towards implementing the EU's Copenhagen criteria on political behaviour, and the ambitions of its economic reform programme tend to be limited by the influence of the CPM's business supporters. So while Ukraine may well fall short in its EU aspirations, it is likely to go further than Moldova in pursuing an economic policy and creating a business environment that are suitable for an aspirant EU member.

As a result, assuming that the CPM continues to govern Moldova, the rhetorical commitment to EU integration may not amount to much more than a guarantee against any dramatic moves towards openly anti-democratic or anti-market policies. Moreover, Moldova's relationship with Russia will remain of central importance, with both the CPM and the centrist factions unlikely to back any fundamental shift away from Russia, even though bilateral relations at the moment are cool.

Moreover, even assuming that the CPM manages to avoid an early election, the country is likely to see far more political instability than during the last four years. By virtue of their dominance of all major organs of power since 2001, the communists had brought an end to the internecine squabbles and government dismissals that had plagued the centre-right’s time in government in 1998-2001. With the CPM losing its qualified majority, and most likely being forced into making concessions in order to avoid a fresh parliamentary election, this period of relative calm is probably coming to an end.

It is likely that the coalition talks required in advance of parliament’s vote on the presidency will be protracted. The CPM’s coalition partners could force Mr Voronin to step aside in favour of a lower-profile successor, who would be less able to dominate the political scene. The return of more vigorous debate in parliament – and the participation of more reform-minded deputies in the legislative process – is to be welcomed, as is the possibility that a new president might be less likely than Mr Voronin to dominate politics in a way hardly envisioned by the parliamentary system enshrined in Moldova’s constitution. However, Moldova’s ill-developed political parties and fragile institutions would almost certainly limit the positive impact that might otherwise be expected – while leaving plenty of scope for the return to the sort of political instability of the 1990s. This is hardly the ideal profile for a putative EU partner.

Is there any particular reason Moldova cannot re-join Romania; they were part of that country before 1940 anyway, and Moldova is just too small, too isolated, to be on itself. Or perhaps Romania does not wish to take its former province back?

If I remember correctly Moldavians rejected such possibility in referendum in 1994 (?). Despite that actual president of Moldova is from communist party and he claiming that before WWII Moldova was occupied by Romania. As I know only the right-wing Christian Democratic Popular Party supported such idea in the past but in recent elections they were just on third place with 10% of votes.

Well, one wonders how this little sliver of a country manages to live, other than by money from other countries.

Moldova was the only country in which I was an "illegal alien" (I spent four days there), and it is just incredibly poor.....and tiny. And landlocked.

It was those lying, cheating, dishonest Ukrainians who got me in there; I wanted to enter legally, but no, they had "better" ideas.

If the honest way is straight and short, and the dishonest way crooked and long, the Ukrainians always chose the second way. It seems to be their national sport, being dishonest.

But one loves Ukrainians anyway; delightful people.

Essentially, all I ever saw there was agriculture, and subsistence agriculture at that (i.e., farming enough to feed the family, and no more than that).

I was in Kishinev, hoping to lay some flowers on the site of a bloody massacre of the Jews circa 1905, and got madder than a wet hen when I learned the Moldovans thought it was nothing worth commemorating, or remembering.

Well, one wonders how this little sliver of a country manages to live, other than by money from other countries.

What is more funny, the most industrialized region in Moldova is tiny Transdniestr which is under control of the Russian speaking separatists supported by Russian troops. Transdniestr producing also most of Moldavian energy.

In fact they are dependent from neighboring countries and Russia. But I read that Azerbaijani company has to built oil and passenger ports in tiny slight of Danube river which is under Moldavian control. In that way they will have easy access to the Black sea. After that the same Azerbejani firm has to build refinery near the port and that is how Moldova plans to be a fuel exporter and not importer like today.

Russian Duma recently find Moldavian attitude towards Russia very unkind and proposed to government sanctions for Moldova, including forbid import of their wine.

I know, sir.

But it has been the experience of my life that I have usually found myself in ridiculous situations.

But I would not change anything that has ever happened, in my life, excepting that I wish I could have been kinder to other people.

Of course, this claim is SUCH a joke. Republic of Moldovia is Romanian land, snatched by the USSR. Unfortunately, there are many Russians living there, consequence of the USSR trying to repopulate that land with their own people. Also unfortunately the media doesn't really pay attention to the reality of what happens in Moldova (as well as the rest of the Romanian land taken by the Russians: parts of Basarabia and Bukovina). There is a strong movement, a lot stronger than portrayed by the media, to re-annex Moldova (as well as Basarabia and Bukovina) to where they always belonged: Romania. However, the movement is done quite carefully because of the fact that nobody wants to see a repeat of last decade's Balkan war, when Yugoslavia split into independent states and the Muslim population started to make illegal and historically unsubstianted claims on Serbian land (Palestine comes to mind as well!). I guess it's a matter of time, democracy, votes and careful consideration before this issue is put to rest.

There is a strong movement, a lot stronger than portrayed by the media, to re-annex Moldova (as well as Basarabia and Bukovina) to where they always belonged: Romania

How about Romania, most of the society would support that idea?

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