…But the biggest price for Moldovan society could be that, not depending so much on Brussels already, the government of Moldova will not have big obligations towards the reforms assumed through the Association Agreement, in general, and the roadmap undertaken in the context of the disputes related to the change in the electoral system, in particular. Is the current government ready to pay such a crucial price on the declared path of European integration?
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Incontestably, the president of the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) Vlad Plahotniuc is the person with the biggest power of influence in the Republic of Moldova. Everyone knows that he works a lot. People close to him say he works about 20 hours a day. Almost everyone admits that Vlad Plahotniuc has a big and well–trained team. And thus, this very busy person leaves everything aside and goes to Turkey, unexpectedly, at least for the public opinion. He delegated the problems he has to solve there to no one, even if he has who to delegate them to and even if it had been only two weeks since his right hand, Speaker of Parliament Andrian Candu returned from a three-day visit to Turkey. Or possibly the ‘right hand’ went there to pave the way? It could be about things that cannot be transmitted through diplomatic channels or through any other member of the team. Which could these be?

Judging logically and by particular signs, there could be two types of problems that can justify such behavior by the most influential and busiest man: 1) own businesses that could be in serious danger or could need new important opportunities outside the country; 2) urgent state affairs influenced by him and/or the government he represents. Or maybe both of them simultaneously. In the absence of comprehensive information, we will leave the variant concerning businesses aside and will focus on the biggest problems of the state/government of Moldova.

The analysts who said it is illogical for Vlad Plahotniuc to go to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to seek assistance from him in obtaining the pullout of the Russian troops from the Transnistrian region could be right. Vlad Plahotniuc and the government in general are sufficiently lucid to realize that the President of Turkey will not risk his new friendship with Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation, which is somehow in opposition to the U.S. (amid the non-extradition of the spiritual leader of the Turkish opposition Fethullah Gulen, who established in the U.S.), to NATO (amid the tensions related to the purchase of Russian anti-rockets by Turkey) and to the EU (amid the cold attitude of this to the harsh reaction by Turkish officials to the ‘attempted coup’ of last summer, for the sake of the Republic of Moldova.

The hypothesis that he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in Turkey that day, is also exaggerated. The reasons were deciphered sufficiently convincingly by Speaker of Parliament Andrian Candu. But we should not ignore this interest of Putin in Erdogan with whom, as the foreign press says, he met for five times during the last two months. Respectively, in the world of big politics, the often meetings at high level point to special relations and major interests.  

The version that Vlad Plahotniuc went to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to take over the initiative of high-level relations that are being established by President Igor Dodon with his Turkish counterpart also does not seem verisimilar. Earlier they even said that Erdogan promised a rather large amount of money to Dodon for reconstructing the Presidential Palace in central Chisinau. However, for such purposes, the meetings of the Turkish President with Prime Minister Pavel Filip and Speaker Andrian Candu the same month, at a distance of one week from each other, would have been enough. The frequency of the meetings with the President of Turkey, which ended with the meeting of the most influential man, shows that there are big stakes that require the guarantee of the most important persons.

If it is not about politics and geopolitics, there is nothing more important than the money after or even before these. Vlad Plahotniuc could have gone to Recep Tayyip Erdogan after money, after not less than €100 million or even €200 million, or as much as it would be needed to fill the gap that would appear in the state budget if the EU does not provide the €100 million in macro-financial assistance. Either the government of Moldova already knows that the EU will not provide this money, if Vlad Plahotniuc’s PDM does not renounce the already adopted law on the mixed-member system, or it gets ready for such a twist. It results that in both of the cases the law on the mixed-member system will not be annulled.

The figure of €100-200 million in the form of a Turkish loan could be reached if we admit that the EU decides not to allocate the €100 million in macro-financial assistance and will not recommend Romania to offer Moldova more than the €150 million that was already provided and that saved Moldova’s budget from an imminent failure. If Romania cannot lend to the Republic of Moldova, no other country from the EU’s sphere of influence and not even the most influential and richest country from over the ocean will do it.

This maneuver could mean a particular kind of pressure on the European Union to make it offer money, if it hasn’t yet taken this decision univocally. Anyway, the stake of last Thursday’s visit to Turkey could be a large sum of money for budget needs with which the government could pay salaries and pensions and could avoid a socioeconomic collapse before the next year’s parliamentary elections on which it banks and for which it does a lot to win them, even what is not permitted. Officially, the loan could be raised in the form of “development projects” or “large-size investments”, as one of the commentators of the IPN news article about the meeting between Plahotniuc and Erdogan noted, but who seems to know more than he says. 

But Erdogan does not have reasons to offer so much and so important money to the government of Moldova without receiving something instead, besides the money, and guarantees that it will get what he is promised to. Only one person in Moldova can provide such guarantees, in person.

What the Turkish President can ask instead? First of all, the closing of the network of Moldovan-Turkish lyceums “Orizont” in the Republic of Moldova, which are said to be under the influence of Fethullah Gulen in other states as well. It is said that Istanbul requested this earlier, but without success. In his determination to remove any kind of real opposition, the Turkish President could do with this price, but this is not definite. There could be other requests as well. For the Moldovan government, this could seem a not too big price for its chance to survive and to reemerge after the next parliamentary elections. Besides, a lot of problems faced by the people and society in general will be solved with this money. The fact that these lyceums are the best ones in Moldova could not matter much for someone. 

But the biggest price for Moldovan society could be that, not depending so much on Brussels already, the government of Moldova will not have big obligations towards the reforms assumed through the Association Agreement, in general, and the roadmap undertaken in the context of the disputes related to the change in the electoral system, in particular. Is the current government ready to pay such a crucial price on the declared path of European integration?

It would be ideal if the eventual negotiations on the Turkish loan held by Vlad Plahotniuc referred to some additional money besides those expected from the EU.

Another salvaging hypothesis in which we want to believe is that the visit, or the visits in several stages, could have been made at the request of the development partners for promoting some bigger interests than Moldova’s budget and the fate of some separate Moldovan parties…

Valeriu Vasilică, IPN