At the end of last week, President Igor Dodon left for the United States on a seven-day visit, which was also a family trip because he took his wife with him too. Even though this is his first visit across the ocean in the three years of his presidency, it did not become the key event of the week. 

Firstly, it is a tangential visit: Dodon’s departure to the United States is related to the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly. 

Secondly, it wasn’t Dodon who was meant to go to the U.N., but the Prime Minister, Maia Sandu. However, either for “friendly” reasons or in order to test Dodon’s diplomatic skills in Washington (not just in Moscow), Prime Minister Sandu offered this chance to Dodon, invoking a very busy agenda (“we have a lot of work in government”).  

Dodon gladly accepted it, as he has always longed to take pictures, arm in arm with his wife, at least with the background of the White House, if not in the Oval Office, at a tete-a-tete discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump. 

There is also a third possible reason why President Dodon leaving for the U.S. did not become the news of the week: America is not the world to which Dodon is committed. And he went there not because he would like to move Moldova closer to America. 

Dodon’s geopolitical preferences are well-known. His visit to the U.S. and the U.N. is nothing but a simple PR move, similar to the one at the Second Peace Forum in Paris, where Dodon, putting on airs, took pictures next to Trump, Macron, Merkel, Erdogan, Iohannis and Poroshenko. He had nothing to say to them, except ”Good morning, I am President Igor Dodon from Chișinău.” But he did take pictures with everyone and later filled the internet with them. 

The visit to Washington might be a repeat of the one to Paris, with the only exception being, perhaps, that at the U.N. Dodon will deliver a speech about Moldova and its president, who wants to be on friendly terms with both the East and the West, who would like to be in the European Union, but not break with the Commonwealth of Independent States – which is possible only in Dodon’s political imaginings. 

Although Dodon promised Prime Minister Sandu and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration,Nicu Popescu that he would coordinate his talk with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, several opinion leaders from Chișinău didn’t exclude the possibility that Dodon could mess things up and tilt the message in favour of Russia’s political and geopolitical interests in the region. 

Let’s return to the key topic of the week. As I mentioned earlier, the press, civil society and foreign diplomatic institutions working in Chișinău, focused not so much on Dodon’s departure to America (although a Moldovan president has not spoken at the U.N. tribune since 2005), but on the 100 Days Report since the entry into office of the Sandu Government. It is only natural, since, after June 8, Moldova entered a complicated and unclear political experiment, in which the inadmissible and the admissible shook hands.

The extreme left or the “pro-Russian left” and “pro-European right”, unexpectedly for many, struck a deal and agreed to set aside geopolitical divergences, to no longer divide Moldova between East and West, to organize (or clean up) the state administration system, to make the law reclaim its role, to get rid of corruption and corrupt people, of oligarchy and oligarchs, of thievery, exodus and poverty. In other words, to make order and justice in Moldova. 

The ACUM Bloc’s condition in their deal with the Socialist Party was the de-oligarchization of Moldova, the depoliticization of the state institutions and their removal from the captivity of the former Plahotniuc regime. One hundred days have passed – the litmus test for the government and coalition. How much has been achieved? Too what degree have the three coalition partners managed to realize their goals? 

Society is still divided. Especially after the ACUM Bloc signed the new Cooperation Agreement on Governing with the Socialist Party for an indefinite period of time. While some believe that of the two evils the lesser has been chosen, others insist that before the temporary governing agreement with the Socialists expired, the ACUM Bloc had to initiate or support the Democratic Party’s initiative to declare the Socialist Party unlawful for illegal financing from abroad and treason, and announce early elections. 

ACUM denies the second option as a real solution, especially after Democrats’ appeal in this regard was rejected by the prosecutor’s office as baseless. However, ACUM is no longer very optimistic that the alliance with the Socialists would be a valid government solution. And yet, what do we have after 100 days of hybrid, according to some – monstrous, governance?  

The thing that definitely happened is the fall of the Plahotniuc regime. After a week’s resistance, the Democratic Party ceded the government, and Vlad Plahotniuc and his entourage fled Moldova. Subsequently, they withdrew from all public activities, sold their properties and settled abroad. The regime has fallen.

Two: Moldova has been removed from international isolation.

Three: Rather difficult, but reform in the justice system has started.

Four: The Sandu Government is trying to support the citizens.

Five: According to Dodon, in three months, the Alliance managed to achieve 90 percent of the temporary Agreement regarding the de-oligarchization of Moldova and the depoliticization of state institutions. And it is true, only these depoliticized institutions have been re-politicized by the Socialist Party, which now controls the Prosecutor’s Office, the Constitutional Court, the National Anticorruption Center, the Information and Security Service, the Army, etc. 

Six: The first arrests were made in the case of the stolen billion. Only they were arrests from the “bottom,” not from the “top.” Plahotniuc is still free. And Shor is at liberty, because there is nobody (?!) to handle their case. Shor revealed names from the list of “top” thieves on September 25. Who will follow? 

On Monday, Prime Minister Sandu called her ministers to report. Let’s see how good they are. The general impression is that they are doing well in their positions. But they have to hurry, to “speed up,” because according to Sandu, they have a lot of work to do.

Petru Grozavu,