

EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn (left) with President Igor Dodon in Moldova on Monday. Photo: EPA/Doru Dumitru.

The pro-European political bloc ACUM and the pro-Russian Socialist Party, PSRM, held talks on Tuesday about the possibility of establishing a new parliamentary majority in Moldova after almost three months of political deadlock.

The negotiations started after US, EU and Russian officials visited Moldova on Monday.

ACUM, which unites the PAS and PPDA parties, has 26 parliamentary seats, while the PSRM has 35, giving both parties 61 out of the total of 101 mandates in the Moldovan legislature.

After the talks, PPDA leader Andrei Nastase said he urged the Socialists to commit to ACUM’s agenda.

“I urged them [PSRM] to engage in this fight with the mafia, the oligarchy, in our struggle with corruption, poverty and the exodus [of emigrants] to which the Moldovan population is being subjected,” Nastase told a press briefing.

The leader of PAS, Maia Sandu, insisted meanwhile that “there is a need in Moldova to have a functioning parliament which will start the process of the ‘de-oligarchisation’ of the state”.

Sandu also said that the state must be freed from what she called “the captivity of Plahotniuc “, a reference to the ruling Democrat Party’s leader Vlad Plahotniuc.

The Democrat Party won 30 seats in the parliamentary election which took place on February 24.

But the leaders of the PSRM criticised the positions taken by the ACUM bloc.

“Their positions are very rigid and I saw that it is an opening and we will see what will follow,” said PSRM leader Zinaida Greceanii.

One of PSRM’s major demands is the speaker of parliament position, the only office which can allow the suspension of the president.

Moldova’s pro-Russian president Igor Dodon has been suspended five times in the last two-and-a-half years. Dodon is planning to run for a second term in 2020, and a PSRM speaker of parliament could prevent further suspensions.

The European Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy Johannes Hahn said on Monday after meeting with the leaders of the main three parliamentary political forces that if early elections are needed, there is a risk that the IMF will suspend its financial assistance programme for Moldova.

Hahn added that this means Chisinau will not receive any more money from the EU either.

The director of the US Department of State’s East European Affairs Office, Brad Freden, who also visited Chisinau on Monday, said that Washington is willing to collaborate with any administration in Moldova that reflects people’s votes.

“We also talked to the Socialists, not to put pressure on the formation of a government, it is not our job,” he said.

The Kremlin’s economic representative, Dmitry Kozak, urged the formation of a new government but said early elections would be needed “sooner or later”.

Kozak implied that a coalition between the PSRM and ACUM would be the best option, with early elections to follow after a fair framework for this can be implemented.

“Russia will not interfere in the political equation in Moldova, but early elections are inevitable given that the three main parliamentary parties have mutually exclusive positions,” he said.