The current Parliament brings together two distinct types of deputies from opposed and absolutely incompatible parties. On the one hand, it is the first legislature that has so many corrupt people per square meter. Moreover, it has criminally convicted deputies as well as fugitive and prosecuted deputies, investigated for money laundering and scams. I think it is the first legislature in which the oligarch, who invested the most to become a deputy, gave up everything and fled abroad. It is also the first parliament that has so many party switchers, who create small groups and useless factions. The Democratic Party was the initiator of this parliamentary degeneration: in 2019 they had 30 deputies in the Parliament and in two years their number was reduced to two-thirds. The party lost everything, as recent virtual polls announce that its representatives will no longer reach the threshold level to get into Parliament in the next elections. Pro Moldova as well as For Moldova – factions generated by Democratic Party – will not reach the election threshold either. Nor the non-affiliates, who quitted the Democratic Party, will get into the next parliament.

The Democratic Party showed everyone how the rise of a party may end up in its natural destruction and politicians can draw a good lesson from it. On the other hand, other parties risk accumulating a smaller number of deputies too. The electorate is as dissatisfied as ever with corruption, money laundering, and deputies’ weak participation in enforcing investigations, holding accountable the institutions that should have fought corruption. The Socialist Party may pay the same price for not ensuring transparency at the Presidency, as well as at the ministries affiliated with the Socialist Party, leaving in the lurch the investigation of the billion dollars bank fraud and the reforms in the judiciary.

In contrast to the most corrupt, fugitive, and blackmailable deputies, there are new ones, who are in the parliament for the first time. Some of them come to Parliament by bike, others – on foot, they are indifferent to expensive jewelry, do not own yachts and their vacations do not exceed their income. They are well-schooled, outspoken, open-minded, brave, principled, young, creative, and non-blackmailable. These are basically the deputies of the Action and Solidarity Party and the Political Platform Dignity and Truth. If not for them, the corrupt would feel more secure. Truly, in each party, there are deputies who should have done more as well as deputies who broke the patterns. There were not so many of them, but they made the first step – they proved it is possible.

New parliamentary elections are to be held soon, although the exact date is not known yet. We may find out this week whether we’ll have a new government or early elections. However, it is clear that we now have a Parliament with the shortest term and the most incoherent activity. It is imperative to write a different parliamentary history from now on.

The candidates into the new Parliament will have to cope with the most difficult task: building trust with the Parliament. The corrupt, the fugitives, the party switchers damaged all present and future deputies’ reputations, the faction, and party colleagues’ names. People generalize and talk about all deputies as corrupt and liars. The insults of the false promises used by some politicians to cover their acts of corruption have left very deep traces.

Everyone will lose something in the next elections. The corrupt will lose because people are disappointed in them. The uncorrupt will lose by wasting more time, energy, and strength to convince people that they have a chance to succeed by choosing better. Honest politicians have always been in the minority, they are weaker and they have had to work much harder during elections and between campaigns. Now they have an even more difficult task: not only to explain to people who they are, what they have done and their future plans but also to work to restore trust in the elections, in Parliament, as well as in democracy and in fighting corruption. It is a hard and long-termed effort, not for the nearest four years, but maybe for 40 years ahead. Let us see if this fight starts in 2021.