A Couple of Cool Guys and Only One Country

President of Moldova, socialist Igor Dodon, was suspended from his duties by the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova. The reason was due to his repeated refusal to sign the appointment of the parliament’s nominee for the position of Minister of Defense. Igor Dodon, being a supporter of the military neutrality of Moldova, considered his both candidates to be “the hawks and supporters of rapprochement with NATO, insisting on the appointment of more neutral candidates, but his request was rejected by the parliamentarians, and the President’s counterpart, Prime Minister Pavel Filip, and the Constitutional Court found a way to force in the Parliament’s decision bypassing the head of state in return.

The removal of the socialist President will be effective until the signing of the nominee of the minister by Prime Minister Pavel Filip or the speaker Andrian Candu, and Moldovan experts attribute this decision to the pressure from the Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, who is considered to be the “master of Moldova” and one who controls all politicians in the Republic without exception, including President Dodon.

«Dodon is forced to put up with the decision of the Constitutional Court and he w never be able to escape from the influence of Plahotniuc,” Pavel Grigorchuk, a communist and a political prisoner in the past, is certain. «Dodon will not argue with an unprecedented decision of the court since the elections won by Igor Dodon were the result of no less voluntaristic judicial verdicts. Alas, our Constitutional Court has long advocated not as an independent judicial body, but as an institution that takes political decisions”.

Let me remind you that until quite recently, according to the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, president of the country was elected by the Parliament. The amendment to the Basic Law therewith, which opened the way for the head of state nation-wide election, was not adopted in a constitutional way, that is, through the procedure for amending the law on the elections and the appropriate noting in the parliament, but by the decision of the same Constitutional Court.

«Tie vacuum of legitimacy caused by the questionable decision of the Constitutional Court regarding the removal of the President, whose election is also controversial from the point of view of the Moldovan laws, but gained legitimacy due to the popular vote, meets the interests of the only person in the country – Plahotniuc”, said Grigorchuk in a telephone interview. “Plahotniuc used Dodo” who contributed to the election of the oligarch as Vice-President of the Socialist international, an Influential worldwide Organization. Now that the President has fulfilled his mission, Plahotniuc gracefully crossed him to pursue his policy, which is very far from the goals and objectives of the international socialist movement.

So what is the position of Vladimir Plahotniuc and why did he so urgently need the duties of the Minister of Defense were assigned not to the acting person to the fully functional minister, who is even the member of the hawk camp?

The answer to his question should obviously be sought in the relations between Moldova and the self-proclaimed state of Transnistria (the Moldovan Transdniestrian Republic) – anenclave that separated from Moldova during the collapse of the USSR and pressed between Moldova and Ukraine. In 1991-1992 the breakaway region, populated mainly by the Russians, the Moldovans, and the Ukrainians, reflected a military attempt to restore Moldova’s sovereignty on its territory and its security is ensured by the Russian military forces under the UN mandate.

The relations between the Republic of Moldova and the Moldovan Transdniestrian Republic are the subject of long term of negotiations. At the same time, the prospect of restoring sovereignty of the Republic of Moldova over the rebellious republic directly depends on the negotiation process and the fulfillment of a number of agreements by the parties, including many points, namely, the restoration of trade relations, the development of cooperation in trade, economic and law enforcement sphere, the unhindered movement of people and goods through checkpoints on the line of delimitation, the refusal to prosecute the participants in the armed conflict, etc. However, to begin with, we are talking about mutual respect for the political system, which naturally formed on the territory of both entities formed on the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

The implementation of these initiatives should be facilitated by the election of

Socialist President Igor Dodon, who took a measured stance on the Transdniestria matter and promised to seek restoration of friendly relations with the Russian Federation, stumbling block which was “the Transdniestria matter”. And this approach is shared by the majority of Moldovan citizens, as evidenced by the election of the conditionally pro-Russian politician Igor Dodon by direct voting instead of the secret negotiations that are customary for the Moldovan politics on the margins of the Parliament.

In the meantime, the possibilities of Igor Dodon turned out to be significantly limited by the position of the Parliament, since the adoption of political decisions under the conditions of the parliamentary-presidential republic is the prerogative of the Parliament completely controlled by Vladimir Plahotniuc.

An important factor of the Moldovan politics is also the Romanian lobby, which casts doubt on the sovereignty of the Republic of Moldova by placing the stake on the incorporating of Moldova to neighboring Romania. Due to the longstanding domination of pro-Romanian forces in the Moldovan politics, Romanian was declared the state language of Moldova, while the Moldovan language was declared only its dialect, and school and university history textbook consider the history of Moldova exclusively in the context of the Great Romanian region. Igor Dodon’s attempts to make these matters available for a referendum and, at the same time, receive tools of effect on the Parliament through a nationwide referendum were blocked by the decision of the Constitutional Court. At the same time, five of the six judges who banned the referendum and later removed the postwar period. Furthermore, the issue of the territorial integrity of Serbia was then ignored by the majority of the participants in the General Assembly. The convergence of Moldovan hawks with Ukraine, which turns not only into a source of military instability in Europe, but also into a militarized state entity that is unable to resolve military and political problems at home, but ready to saber at the first opportunity, and especially where there is a possibility to annoy the Russian Federation. Kiev has been accusing Russia of conducting military operations in Donbass for three years, but hasn’t yet provided convincing evidence from the point of view of international instances.

If at the early stages of the Transdniestrian conflict at least the Ukrainian radical nationalists acted on the side of Transdniestria, thus, defending the Ukrainian population, along with other people opposed to the policy of violent Romanianization, today their position is determined not by the interests of the Ukrainians, but by the mode of denying separatism around the world. On October 4, 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine agreed to sign an agreement with the Republic of Moldova on joint control of the goods supplied at the border checkpoints between Ukraine and the MTR, while the interests of the MTR were not taken into account. The checkpointsas part of this initiative located on the Ukrainian territory were complemented by Moldovan border guards, which is considered by the Transdniestrian side as a step aimed at preparing a total blockade of Transdniester, and in case of military operations against the MTR by Moldova, Ukraine will most probably act as an ally of Moldova.

Moldova’s sabotage of a peaceful dialogue between Kishinev and Tiraspol concerns not only the military sphere. In particular, preliminary agreements were not reached by the Moldovan Parliament during the negotiations regarding the registration of automobile license plates issued in the MTR in Moldova. So far, vehicles with Transdniestria numbers cannot cross the Moldovan-Romanian border and move around the territory of the European Union. In the course of peaceful negotiations, the proposal of the Transdniesterparty on the introduction of neutral license plates for trucks was repeatedly discussed. The similar sample numbers should not contain images of state symbols of Transdniestria or Moldova, and this proposal was approved by all international mediators.

However, due to the position of the Moldovan side, the decision on this issue has not yet been made, but of progress the situation is deteriorating. In particular, the increasing number of menaces have been heard from Kishinev on the introduction of a similar ban on the movement of cars with Transnistrian registration also on the territory of Ukraine, which, given the current position of Kiev, sounds quite convincing.

Equally alarming is the campaign launched in the press controlled by Vladimir Plahotniuc. So, the young politician Dmitry Voloshin, who positions himself as very successful in all spheres of “ubermensch”: a businessman, an intellectual, an athlete, “an iron man”, a traveler, an icon of the creative class and a patriot of

Moldova, published a resonant article on his own web-site calling at the world community to exert pressure on Transdniestria to achieve accession to Moldova with the help of external forces. It is easy to assume that this is the way in which a powerful propaganda campaign is launched in the Moldovian society at breaking the existing status quo in Moldova’s relations and the self-proclaimed MTR,           aimed at worsening the relations between existing subjects and the breakaway of the road map. This state of affairs cannot but arouse fears of every clear-sober European. It seems that the Moldovan politics, orchestrated by Vlad Plahotniuc, takes the «Ukrainian course» artificially inflame nationalists sentiments, militarize the society and radicalize it, which in the near  future may turn into a new bloody conflict in the southeast of the continent. Furthermore, the prospect of drawing external players into the conflict – Russia, Romania and Ukraine-threatens to turn the whole region Into a zone ortota chaos and war.

David Abischer