L A I NTERPRETACIÓN E CONÓMICA
V- EL IMPACTO ECONÓMICO DE LAS REGLAS DE RESPONSABILIDAD EXTRACONTRACTUAL
A great majority of Moldovan political formations are strongman parties organ- ised around charismatic leaders. Such parties naturally turn into instruments serving the political and business interests of their leaders and sponsors, instead of understanding and articulating the interests of particular sections of society. Attempts at building bottom-up parties based on broad self-governing struc- tures capable of influencing the party leadership’s policy have been undertaken only recently and so far have not produced any tangible results.19 Moreover, it
is a fairly common practice in Moldova for members of the political-business
19 The formations built based on a horizontal rather than vertical model are mainly pro-Eu-
ropean parties established as opposition to the ruling coalition, such as the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) founded by the former education minister Maia Sandu and the Euro- pean People’s Party of Moldova (PPEM) led by the former prime minister and ex member of Filat’s party Iurie Leancă.
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establishment to take over new political parties. Such people invest consider- able sums of money in their chosen parties, thus enabling them, for instance, to win seats in parliament, where they subsequently become an instrument for protecting the interests of their patron. The takeover of the PDM by Vlad Plahotniuc in late 2009 and early 2010 is a case in point – the party, originally an insignificant group without parliamentary representation, grew to become the second largest force in the pro-European coalition and, at the same time, the foundation of Plahotniuc’s formal presence on the Moldovan political scene. There are reasons to believe that similar processes are affecting the nascent forces of pro-European opposition in Moldova, which have been developing on a bottom-up basis since late 2014. In particular, this concerns the Dignity and Truth Platform party, which emerged several months ago from the social movement called Dignity and Truth Civic Platform, first initiated in early 2015. The Dignity and Truth Civic Platform was a pro-European informal initiative launched by a group of noted Moldovan social activists, journalists and lawyers, which at the onset was not linked to any political formation. As such, it did not have clear-cut structures or one leader. The movement called for broad reforms and de-oligarchisation of the state, and for those responsible for the banking scandal, including Vlad Plahotniuc, to be brought to account. As the movement developed, some of its participants, most notably the attorney Andrei Năstase, increasingly started to argue that the Platform should create a political party which could take part in the next election or designate its candidate for presi- dent. However, a considerable group of the movement’s members did not want it to become politicised. They feared, inter alia, that the move to create a party led by Năstase would be an attempt by Victor Țopa and Viorel Țopa, Plahotniuc’s business rivals living in Germany, to capture the movement and take advantage of its popularity. Those fears were not unfounded. Andrei Năstase had been the lawyer of Victor and Viorel Țopa at the time of their conflict with Plahotniuc in 2011, and the Jurnal TV station owned by the two entrepreneurs was openly supporting the movement’s activities and promoting the idea of creating a politi- cal party. As a result, the movement underwent a split. The Dignity and Truth Platform party, which was ultimately established in December 2015 and has been led by Năstase, has links to the Civic Platform but is formally independent of it. There are also serious reasons to believe that the party has been receiv- ing financing from abroad, most probably from Victor and Viorel Țopa. In this context it is worth noting another problem, i.e. the continuing financial and political dependence of the Moldovan left on Russia. Moldova’s main left-wing forces (formerly the Party of Communists and currently Igor Dodon’s Party of Socialists and Renato Usatii’s Our Party) receive financial, political and media
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backing from Moscow, which perceives them as instruments of its policy to- wards Moldova.20 As a result, they too focus more on representing the interests
of their patron, in this case the Kremlin.
Because of this instrumentalisation of political parties in Moldova and the regu- lar political crises it has engendered (stemming from the conflicting interests of the different party leaders-owners), combined with the generally poor quality of the country’s ruling elites and the absence of genuine dialogue with the vot- ers, the people in Moldova not only distrust their political class but also harbour an open aversion towards it. This is visible in the polls in which more than 92% of Moldovans are dissatisfied with the quality of political life in their country. Nearly 90% also believe that the republic is not being governed in accordance with the nation’s will. The state institutions occupy the lowest positions in cred- ibility rankings. In April 2016, the president, the parliament, the government and the political parties were trusted by 5.9%, 6.8%, 7.4% and 7.9% of respond- ents, respectively.21 In the same poll, every second person in Moldova distrusted
all key political figures. It is symptomatic of the scale of the Moldovans’ disil- lusionment with their political elite that foreign politicians rank much higher in credibility rankings. While Igor Dodon, who tops the credibility ranking for Moldovan politicians, reported a showing of 8.2% in 2016, Vladimir Putin was trusted by 63% of respondents in the same poll, the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis reported a showing of 33.2%, and Angela Merkel and Barack Obama were trusted by 25 to 30% of respondents.22