Vladimir Mitev
Cristian Bolotnicov is a Moldovan journalist who works for Radio Free Europe’s bureau in Chișinău. He has previously worked for the media of the young people in Moldova Agora.md.
The Moldovan journalist believes that Maia Sandu has succeeded in foreign policy because she has overcome her country’s isolation and has drawn international attention to it. But Sandu has underperformed on economic, social and justice issues. On the other hand, her opponent in the second round of the presidential elections, former Prosecutor General Aleksandr Stoianoglo, who played a key role in the signing and ratification of the Association and Free Trade Agreement with the EU in 2014, would not change the course of the country’s foreign policy towards the East, if he becomes president.
The atmosphere in the country is tense. According to Bolotnicov, in the days leading up to the presidential elections, Maia Sandu and her team began to show signs of nervousness. Sandu is constantly attacking Stoianoglo, but it is possible that by taking blows, he will become more sympathetic to Moldovans. The situation in the Republic of Moldova will continue to be tense and polarized because parliamentary elections are coming up next year and polarization in the world is not decreasing either, adds Cristian Bolotnicov.
Mr. Bolotnicov, in the campaign before the presidential elections, Maia Sandu positioned herself as if she were saying “Europe, this is me” (L’Europa c’est moi). So she gave a clear signal that a vote for her was a vote for Europe, and a vote for Europe should probably mean a vote for her. Given that the results show that 49% of the people voted “no” in the referendum that asked for constitutional changes to allow EU accession, what were those people who voted “no” voting against? Were they voting against Europe or against Maia Sandu?
It’s a very good question, because most of the people who voted “no” in the referendum voted mostly against Maia Sandu, because this referendum, in my opinion, was not as necessary as the government said it was, because we are talking about asking the people “Let’s join the European Union”, when the people have not seen what the European Union in Moldova, I mean this candidate status, these billions of euros that will come to Moldova, would mean for them.
That is my first observation. The second is that we don’t know for sure if all those people really voted against Maia Sandu or against European integration, because I think you saw that most of those people just sold their vote. We don’t know exactly how many, but the police estimate that they have identified at least 100,000-130,000 people. But they say it could be more, even more than what Maia Sandu said, like more than 300,000 people.
So about 20% of the votes were bought by a politician like Ilan Ţor. We don’t have a clear answer about the people’s preferences here either. The polls said that the vote against would be about 40-45%, but instead we got what we got. So we don’t have a clear answer. I hope we will have one in the near future. But right now we don’t know exactly. I think most of the people, probably the people who really wanted to vote, mostly voted against Maia Sandu because they didn’t like that this idea of European integration was linked to her person as president.
Okay, so if it was officially a referendum on the EU, but perhaps also at least partially also a referendum on the figure of Maia Sandu, in what areas has Maia Sandu’s first term been a success? And in which areas can we speak of poor results?
I think Maia Sandu has been very successful in the area of foreign policy. She managed to bring Moldova out of the isolation that we were in before she became president. She did that very well, even if sometimes it meant that Moldova was just jumping on the last train. We didn’t expect her train to go to the European Union. Ukraine announced that they were going to sign the application to join the European Union and Maia Sandu and the Moldovan government did it too about a week or two after Ukraine signed it. There was criticism against her. But to cut a long story short, Maia Sandu was very successful in the foreign policy area.
On the other hand, it hasn’t been very successful in the areas of the economy and justice. We can’t blame her for all the mistakes in the economy, because the power to change things in the economy is more in the hands of the government and parliament. But regarding the judiciary, Maia Sandu has the power to appoint judges. I think she’s done a good job, but her team and her government (she got this comfortable majority in parliament after the July 2021 elections) hasn’t done the best work. There are a lot of people who are blamed for most of the failures (because the justice system is still not working as it is expected to work – a lot of important cases are still pending, the evaluation process on judges is a long, complex and very slow process, a lot of the the people who were sentenced or are going to be sentenced, mostly oligarchs are still outside of the country, especially Ilan Șor and Vladimir Plahotniuc). If I answer in the simplest terms, this is what I can say about what, when and where Maia Sandu managed to do the best. In foreign affairs she was the best, and in internal affairs, mostly justice and economy she and her team didn’t manage to work according to the expectation of the citizens.
Okay, if we look at her opponent, Alexander Stoianoglo, Romanian media wrote that he’s a Romanian citizen and one of his daughters works at the European Central Bank. Moreover, Stoianoglo played an important role in the process of signing and ratifying the Association and Free Trade Agreement with the EU in 2014. In this context, how justified are the claims that if Stoianoglo wins the presidential elections, there will be a change in Moldova’s geopolitical orientation towards the East?
I don’t think there will be a major change in the geopolitical direction of Moldova if Stoianoglu wins. Let’s look at the map. We are landlocked between Ukraine and Romania. This means that even if we wanted to have a better position, to be closer to Russia, geographically we can’t. Secondly, it has to do with the economy, and it has to do with the fact that Moldova as a state is the kind of state that survives thanks to the help of the EU and Romania and the help of the international community.
So these are the pragmatic, practical reasons. But I also don’t think that Stoianoglu will change course, because even the leader of the party that supports him, the socialist Igor Dodon, the former president of Moldova, has said that they will not stop the negotiation process with the European Union and that they will continue it. This is a change of rhetoric, because everyone understands that the Moldovan state must find a way to survive independently.
The only way forward, at least for now, is to join the European Union. If things change for the worse, if the Ukrainian army does not resist or something like that happens and we end up with Russia as a direct neighbour, then there will probably be a major and significant change of course. But for now, if Stoianoglu becomes president, I don’t think there will be any other major changes.
Also, according to the Constitution, the president in Moldova is only a formal position. It is mostly ceremonial. And all the power is more in the hands of the parliament and the government, because we are a parliamentary republic, and the parliamentary elections from next summer are where the real game will be played.
We saw how the diaspora changed the outcome of the referendum. In which countries did Maia Sandu win the vote of the Moldovan diaspora, and in which countries did Stoianoglo prevail? And what could be the reason why Moldovans voted one way in some countries and another way in others?
The Moldovan diaspora made the referendum answer “yes”. If we talk about the presidential elections, we’ll see that of the 37 countries where the polls were open for the 20th October 2024 elections, Maia Sandu managed to win an absolute majority in 33 countries. Maia Sandu won mainly in Europe and North America, where the diaspora is more favourable to her, while Stoianoglo won in only three countries. One of them is Russia, where only two polling stations were opened. The other two are Turkey and Bulgaria. These were the countries where Stoianoglo managed to win the most votes.
There were countries, like I think in Greece, where not in the whole country, but at the embassy poll Renato Usatii, the current kingmaker, who came third in the presidential elections on 20 October 2024, managed to win or ended up in second place, which is something very surprising.
This is the situation from the diaspora with the presidential elections. I’m not sure, but I think that in the Moldovan diaspora there is a disappointment, not with Maia Sandu personally, but with the performance of her party, the government led by her party, and she is associated with all these failures, and also with the successes, but more with these failures.
And I think that was the main reason why Maia Sandu didn’t get the absolute majority of votes in the diaspora. And secondly, I think it’s because some of the candidates started having these campaign meetings with Moldovan citizens abroad. I think this is the first time I read that they started to do that.
I can’t remember if Stoianoglo did that. I don’t think he did. Usati didn’t do it either. Only Maia Sandu went to Italy to meet Moldovan citizens. And I saw the former Prime Minister Ion Chicu. He came from a pro-Russian alliance, which wasn’t entirely pro-Russian. He went and met some Moldovan citizens in Germany. So I think this is one of the reasons for the result in the diaspora, the presidential election.
We are talking a few days before the second round of the presidential elections. How do you assess the political and social atmosphere in Moldova between the two rounds of the presidential elections? What have the two candidates done in this period to attract voters and how is public opinion evolving in this period?
I would describe the atmosphere, the socio-political atmosphere in Moldova at the moment as tense. First of all, after everyone saw the results of the referendum, there was a huge disappointment. But it’s more than a disappointment. On social media there was this discourse that those who voted “no” should be punished.
How should they be punished? Let’s cut EU funding to the region that voted no. Let’s take away the Romanian passports, because even in the diaspora, more than 20 percent of Moldovans voted “no”. It is quite surprising why they did that. They live in Europe. They know the benefits of living there. Why didn’t they want the same in Moldova?
So it was very tense, and on this background there were some xenophobic messages from some activists who tried to justify why Moldova shouldn’t vote for Stoianoglo. They said that Moldova shouldn’t vote for him because he’s Turkish, because Gagauzia is a Turkish region in Moldova. Their rhetoric was more harsh than what I’ve just described.
The atmosphere is also quite tense because Maia Sandu’s campaigners have decided to use a harder approach and harder messages. Basically they have more direct messages, which may sound like threats. For example, if Moldovans do not vote for Maia Sandu, Moldova will follow the fate of Georgia, we will no longer have this visa liberalisation regime, all borders will be closed if Stoianoglo wins, and so on.
Based on this kind of message, the atmosphere is very tense and the majority of citizens, as far as I can see, are trying to form groups behind their favourites, no matter whether we are talking about Maia Sandu or Alexander Stoianoglo. But things are more desperate for Maia Sandu’s team.
Why is that? Because in the first round of the presidential elections, although she won with 42%, this is the maximum number of votes she can get if we are talking about those who really want her to be president. I think she needs about 200,000 votes, mainly from the diaspora but also from inside the country, to win the second round. And she needs to do that by appealing to the more undecided voters, including those who are pro-Russian or have a more centrist position, like those who voted for Renato Usatii.
So Maia Sandu took a tougher approach. It started to send out messages like – “We know we failed on judicial reform. From now on, we are going to be tougher. We will be more decisive,” and so on. So she’s trying to promote those kinds of messages that will allow her to get more votes, that will portray her as the Iron Lady, as the international media sometimes describe her. Long story short, that’s what I would say about the atmosphere in Moldova. It’s not a peaceful one. It’s an election and there’s a lot of emotion here, that’s the main thing I want to say. There are a lot of emotions.
Again, Moldova is a parliamentary republic, so presidential elections don’t have much importance in our political system. The president is the most important figure, and yes, we will send a very interesting message if Moldova elects another president. But there are a lot of emotions on both sides. These emotions cover the real facts and the reality. Both sides believe that they will win the elections.
I watched the first Sandu-Stoianoglu debate on Sunday. For the first time in the history of debates, on an international level, ironically, a debate without a moderator took place. Maia Sandu and Alexander Stoianoglo simply asked each other questions. What we saw from Maia Sandu was a frontal attack on Stoianoglo. She said that he had done this and that, while Stoianoglo was more defensive. This debate showed the current state of the election campaign, of the election season in Moldova.
I would like to finish with a question about Moldovan society. It is usually discussed that Moldova is a country of great polarisation, and even the referendum results show that there is probably a division in society, almost in two halves. Do you think that Moldovan society will continue with this polarisation or will it try to resolve this division after the presidential elections, no matter who wins?
Well, I think this trend of polarisation will continue because the election season isn’t over. The election season will continue until the summer when we have the general elections. That is the real game. All this external pressure, especially from Russia, will continue. All this disinformation, misinformation campaigns and so on will continue.
So I don’t expect this polarisation to end very soon. But on the other hand, I don’t think that this polarisation is exactly what the referendum showed. More than 55 percent of Moldovans support the idea of EU integration, and there was probably fraud in the referendum. The results don’t show us the reality, but the problem is that neither we nor the authorities have any real proof that this was really the case.
I think it will take years before we see a change in our polarisation. We are a very polarised society. That is also the trend around the world. So I don’t expect this polarisation to end any time soon. Everyone will continue. The stakes are very high, especially in terms of geopolitics. There are a lot of groups who are interested in this situation. Therefore, I think this state of polarisation in our society will continue. And that’s a problem for society, because it will not allow us to have a common goal and a country project – like the EU accession. We may remain in the same situation that we were in for the last 30 years, where we are not sure if we want to be with the West or the East. That is how I explain the tense atmosphere that we’re seeing.
Photo: The first debate between Maia Sandu and Alexander Stoianoglo (source: YouTube)
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