It appears as if the Communists — who failed to win a majority of seats in the Parliamentary election last Sunday — will form a coalition government with the center-left PDM (Democratic Party of Moldova).
This is a major shift; since the April 2009 elections (in which the Communists won, sparking a riot in Chisinau), the PDM had been allied with all the other opposition parties, most notably the Liberal Democratic Party. These opposition parties had been unable to get past their own differences and form a government; until now, Moldova has been in a sort of political purgatory, with an interim government at the helm.
I suspect neither Marian Lupu (the leader of the PDM) nor Vladimir Voronin (the former president and head of the Communists) know what this means for them ideologically, in no small part because the Moldovan Communists don’t seem to know themselves whether they are leftists or rightists. The news outlets, meanwhile, are calling it a center-left coalition. We’ll see how that turns out for the average Moldovan; I predict that the Communists will make sure that pensions get paid on time but that my village will still have plenty of unfilled potholes and only one functioning streetlight.
In the meantime, expect Western commentators (those who notice, anyway) to call this a victory for Russia and to predict that Moldova’s flirtations with the EU and with Romania will be derailed. Some may say that Moldova is the new Ukraine. Others who don’t really seem to know much about Moldova at all may try to be contrarian about it and say we should want the Communists to win. And then there are those who think they see what this election was really about.
The final essay almost gets it right. Mr. Friedman is correct in noting that at the root of this stalemate is an identity crisis: is there a reason why Moldova should exist as an independent nation? Does Moldova make more sense as a part of Romania? Should it be a part of a greater European Union? Should it be within the Russian sphere? Who knows?
But Mr. Friedman makes the same mistake all Western commentators make in issuing a normative judgment on Moldova’s identity sui generis. In other words, Moldova has an identity crisis because they’ve had to submit to outsiders telling them who they are and to whom their land belongs for 500 years. Now, I doubt that geography, history, linguistics, economics, or culture prima facie suggest that a sovereign Moldova makes sense. But regardless of the sense of it, Moldova exists, and we Westerners aren’t doing Moldovans any favors by continuing to tell them who we think they are or what we want them to be. They’ve got to figure it out themselves.
*EDIT: It appears that the “honorary president” of the PDM is denying that anything has happened, and that it’s premature to talk about a coalition. Regardless of what happens and what Moldova’s government looks like, my analysis of commentary on the matter still stands.
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theydothingsdifferentlythere liked this
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tayman liked this
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gubbiofarabia said:
“Moldova is the new Ukraine” - I’m going to use that at a dinner party sometime soon, whether or not it’s accurate. And I’ll blame you.
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tinyflowingcurrents said:
I promise i’ll read this in a second - but how do I add you on goodreads? I am kissing your feet for showing me this.
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onebloceast posted this
