After almost a month of silence, toppled oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc has reappeared – but only virtually. On Tuesday he broke his silence with a Facebook message and an official letter brought to Parliament by Democratic Party politician Sergiu Sârbu. 

The letter announced the resignation of parliamentary deputy Vlad Plahotniuc. Why didn’t he come personally to submit it? Let’s admit it, it would have been nice for the “almighty” to come in front of his colleagues and, during a live broadcast, tell them point blank what he had in mind and why he decided to leave the Legislature. It would have been normal to hold a press conference afterwards and answer journalists’ questions, including those from the many TV stations he founded, bought and financed. Watching the news broadcast on these channels, we see that Vlad Plahotniuc’ s name has come up as rarely as Facebook page posts during the last month.

During the time that Plahotniuc served in a political and administrative role in Moldova, all of the press conferences he held were staged. All his interventions in public space were pre-arranged, recorded beforehand and his briefings were never followed by questions. 

This behavior created the impression that he was always vulnerable. Even though he kept boasting of his grand victory along with all his TV stations, as well as Facebook posts. On January 25, for example, just days before the 2019 parliamentary elections, Vlad Plahotniuc seemed overly confident of his victory and prophesied black days ahead for the opposition, without the slightest thought that he himself might be that opposition. 

“The opposition has no clear government policies and is already crying over the insignificant electoral results it expects. Citizens will penalise it for such behavior, because one cannot govern and achieve success in the country through lamentation,” he said. A good quote. It fits the current opposition perfectly well.

The letter of Vlad Plahotniuc from July 30, 2019 is full of lamentations: “In this situation, I do not want to work for any state institution and today I have renounced the mandate of parliamentary deputy.” It’s like he is pouting: I don’t like this toy and I don’t want to play this game anymore.

Life is complex and no deputy is everlasting (except for Dumitru Diacov who has been in Parliament for 22 years and is currently a Democratic Party deputy), so at the end of a deputy’s term there are a lot of things to do, especially in a poor and desolate state like Moldova. It is obvious that, having disappeared, Plahotniuc is not definitively gone. He is still working in Moldova.

It is the most complicated situation I have ever seen in government. It was probably just as difficult when the USSR collapsed, when Moldova had to break away from the Soviet Union without knowing exactly how to do it. However that Moldova was full of Soviet people. Building the country without those Soviet people was impossible as they were the only people there. So it went on trying to select the least Soviet, the most modern, the most intelligent and the most honest of post-Soviet citizens.

We are in a similar situation now. Plahotniuc is sitting somewhere on bags full of cash, writing letters of resignation from Parliament. All the while his “Soviet” crew hang around Moldova’s institutions. It is difficult to rebuild state structures while avoiding Plahotniuc’ s people altogether. To put it simply, in the last few years there were only four ways of existing in the Republic of Moldova – working in Plahotniuc’ s system, migrating, being oppressed, or pushed out.

The new government has an extremely difficult but interesting task. The only solution – including Dodon’s “Solution” exponents – is integrity in combination with transparency. It is no longer 1940. Nor 1989. Nor 1991. Now everyone has access to the Internet, everyone has questions and if they do not get an answer – they all have a biometric passport and can leave. And governments without people do not exist.

Alina RADU, alina.radu@zdg.md