STEFAN GLIGOR: "PAS FAILED DOMESTIC AGENDA, FIRST OF ALL, CRIMINAL PROSECUTION REFORM"

The Chairman of the "Party of Changes", Stefan Gligor, in his interview with "INFOTAG" news agency told what caused Natalia Gavrilita's resignation, why he opened the "season" of 2023 local elections by supporting the candidate in the Balti elections Nicolai Grigorisin and pointed out the possibility to solve the Transnistrian problem based on the laws already in force in Moldova.

INFOTAG: Mr. Gligor, in your opinion, what prompted the resignation of the government of Natalia Gavrilita? What can Moldova expect in the near future?

Stefan GLIGOR: The Gavrilita government resigned at the request of President Maia Sandu. It was a situation that had been developing for almost six months when it became clear that Gavrilita was not doing well as prime minister. The problem could have been solved if several ministers had been replaced in time - Andrei Spinu, Sergiu Litvinenco, Anna Revenco and, of course, Dumitru Budianschi. The latter unequivocally brought work to a standstill. All ministries complained about him, even the staff of the Ministry of Finance itself. But the ruling majority and Gavrilita personally delayed the changes, which affected the entire government.

The Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development had big problems. Spшnu created it "for himself", taking over virtually two thirds of the economy, including the energy sector. He became Minister-Prime Minister. His ambitions grew, he "did not have enough" own ministry, he wanted to take Gavriliеa's place, which created an internal confrontation in the Government. It got bogged down in internal intrigues and confrontation. Therefore the president came to the conclusion that a reshuffle and a change of prime minister were needed. During the famous "evening meeting" in November 2022, it became clear that Sandu had her own point of view about the urgent changes in the government. And while this internal struggle in the government was going on, there was a classic story - two fought and won the third - Dorin Recean.

His appointment is a very risky step. Recean is a well-known person, a member of Vladimir Filat's team. He was not in charge of education in his office, as Sandu was, but headed the Interior Ministry. It was at that time that smuggling and corruption flourished in the country. A certain shadow falls on him as the head of the law-enforcement ministry. Therefore, the president's decision is a serious political risk, which she took consciously.

The “Party of Change” has a very restrained attitude. We hope that the PAS parliamentary majority has learned the lessons of the country's failures over the past two years. The previous team had no vision of how the economy should develop. There were wrong approaches in the reform of the justice system. The authorities retained the Plahotniuc’s structure of criminal prosecution, which is why a fair definition of justice is characterized by the phrase "mission impossible." We are talking about those notorious "special prosecutor's offices." With their existence, it is impossible to achieve results in the fight against organized crime and corruption.

The authorities failed in the fight against corruption. They thought that if they cooperate with the system, they will get results. But nothing came out of it. All the organized criminal groups (OCG), first of all, are not just at large, but feel fine. Organized criminal groups take advantage of the corruption of prosecutors and courts.

And this contradicts the electoral promises of Sandu and the PAS Party. Citizens see that the fight against corruption has failed, they pay a high price for it, rating and political. They also pay a high price for the energy crisis. Spinu is the last person I would appoint to lead the energy and infrastructure sector.

His mandate began with a scandal concerning the 400 KV Vulcanesti-Chisinau transmission line. The tender was won by KEC (India) at a dumping price of 27 million euros. At the same time, the Romanian firm (with a bid of 27 million euros) was excluded from the tender.

Spinu is a man of incomprehensible professional activity. Not to mention the procurement of gas, and the way it was done. Another questionable episode is the Protocol that Spinu signed with the Russian “Gazprom”, without coordinating his actions with Chisinau.

One of the reasons for the failure of the executive branch is that the previous government failed to cope with the inflation flywheel. The reason is the speculative behavior of companies that resorted to cartel collusion, from medicines to shopping malls. For example, supermarkets are demanding retro bonuses of up to 35% (per trade item) from manufacturers. And the government does not fight this, the corridors of the government at one time were carried around with regulations for retrobonus restrictions, but it disappeared along with the economic policies of the PAS Party.

And all of this was negatively affected by the lack of communication with the public. Gavrilita and her team failed to explain to citizens what they want, where they are leading the country, and what they intend to do.

INFOTAG: Recean returned to power after 10 years as prime minister. What can you say about him?

Stefan GLIGOR: If I were the president, I would not have nominated him for prime minister, and I would have gone the other way. But I'm not the president, I'm the chairman of the “Party of Change”, a young political project, and I work in the political realities of today. We are very cautious about Recean's appointment. The important thing now is to understand what this government wants, and what can it really do? If it does not deal with tax, economic, judicial reforms, does not ensure the patrimonial and financial independence of local authorities, it will cost Moldova several more tens of thousands of people and many years of development.

We will not wait for the first 100 days. The party will soon state its position on the composition and program of the government.

INFOTAG: Unexpectedly for many, Mayor of Balti Nicolai Grigorisin announced that he would run for the office from the “Party of Changes.” Why did the party decide to support him?

Stefan GLIGOR: It's simple. This is the situation in November 2021, when, after Renato Usatii's early resignation, the first round of municipal elections was held in the northern capital. Marina Tauber, the mayoral candidate of the “Shor” Party, received 48% of the vote in it. This is the moment when we realized that things were very bad in Balti. That there had been an information diversion, that Usatii had betrayed the city that had given him a political mandate as mayor - in fact a ticket to political life. Usatii refused to do anything to keep the city from being taken over by Ilan Shor's OCG.

My colleagues and I realized that Shor was putting a lot of money into the campaign. The mercenaries brought in were used to create the effect of being present at pro-Tauber rallies. They were organized in every neighborhood of Balti. The masses were paid.

The "Shor" Party is the facade of Ilan Shor's OCG, which uses the money stolen in Moldova to fool and deceive citizens. The purpose is political protection by obtaining power, as a guarantee of their personal safety and the non-criminalization of the members of the Shor OCG. Therefore, Shor will continue to invest his own and other people's money in the project of the party of his own name.

At the political bureau of the “Party of Change”, we decided that we would support Grigorisin against Tauber in the upcoming elections without preconditions.
Grigorisin is an open person who easily assimilates new demands and accepts criticism in his address. It became clear to us that we would work together. We realized that it was unthinkable for Grigorisin to let Tauber, and therefore Shor’s OCG, take over Balti. There is a peculiar notion of justice and honor in the city.
Imagine a town with more than 100 thousands inhabitants, more voters than in Gagauzia, being taken over by the Shor OCG. It is unclear to me whether this happened with the tacit consent, stupidity or sluggishness of the authorities. I have to hand it to the Central Election Commission. At the time, it had no legal instruments to establish the violations. That should have been done by the police, who were approached by the commission.

The "Party of Change" began to "pressure" the authorities, which helped the law to prevail. Unfortunately, only one episode was documented - "catering," when the “Shor” Party centrally ordered food for 150-170 people. This is the little that law enforcement proved.

We could say that from that moment on we "worked out" with Grigorisin and decided to support him in the elections in the fall of 2023.

INFOTAG: What are you planning to do in Balti?

Stefan GLIGOR: A project has been developed to improve the city lake. One of the longest pedestrian paths in the country will be built. Perhaps, even Chisinau doesn't have such a walking artery. We will connect the city center with the alley around the city lake.

There are many unsolved problems which do not depend on the mayor's office. It is the lack of delimitation by the state of land plots in the city limits. This makes it impossible to sell the land, which means attracting investors and creating jobs. And we are talking about tens of millions of euros in direct revenues a year that the city does not receive because of the government. The city receives no money from the national budget for development, and its assets, through the fault of the government, cannot be sold.

Balti should become a city where you can find a job, get a life, connect with your future. How is labor migration happening now? People from the villages move to the district centers, hoping to find work. Being unsuccessful, they go to Chisinau or directly abroad. Balti and cities of the north of Moldova should become the center of economic gravity, where you can find a decent job, buy a house and provide yourself an acceptable standard of living.

Unfortunately, the central authorities don't understand it. They held a visiting session of the government, promised everything, but didn't do anything. Even the special status of the municipality of Balti, so far, means nothing. The municipality has 222 kilometers of central roads, 180 kilometers of which are in a deplorable state. In 2022, the authorities allocated 34 million lei for their maintenance. But at the same time, the city pays more than 2 billion lei in taxes to the national budget.

The authorities need to understand that with their attitude to the city they show how they look at the entire population of the country. Infrastructure of settlements is an acute problem of the country. I understand that PAS drove the country into a huge budget deficit. Spent on energy because of the mistakes that were made, plus the costs of Putin's Russia's war against Ukraine. But we can't put the country "on pause." The authorities should solve the problems of the population.

INFOTAG: In your opinion, will the PAS Party strengthen the power in local elections or will it continue to fall in its rating?

Stefan GLIGOR: PAS refused to reorganize the districts. The initiative was the right one - to avoid overlapping responsibilities and functions of district and city administrations. The ruling party began to take powers away from local governments.

PAS did not take the path of developing its party territorial organizations (by the way, PAS has very few of them in the north), but rather the path of intimidation and promises. These are enticement tactics, at the expense of promises to allocate money for infrastructure projects. We are talking, first of all, about the national program "European Village", which is the strategy of the ruling majority in the upcoming local elections.

Unfortunately, Moldovan mayors are trying to cooperate with the authorities, to please them. And this happens because there is no local autonomy or decentralization. All the money and the real power are in Chisinau. This is the reason for the phenomenon of mayors migrating from one party to another, when the authorities change. It is a pity that PAS (and PCRM, DPM and PSRM before it) refused to decentralize and transfer powers to local authorities. Once again, the public administration reform has been postponed, now until 2030.

INFOTAG: Can the PAS Party win the Chisinau mayoral elections?

Stefan GLIGOR: PAS has no chance to win elections in Chisinau. But the incumbent mayor Ion Ceban and his political project MAN have a very good chance. This is because he understands well what the voters of Chisinau and its suburbs want. On the background of Dorin Chirtoaca, who has been doing nothing for 10 years (being elected three times), Ceban looks preferable to the common man. His effectiveness is based on two pillars. The first is violation of the law, and it's everywhere, from repairing sidewalks and streets to taking down billboards (which in most cases were done illegally). The second is the municipal budget deficit and debt. He put Chisinau's budget into deficit of about 3 billion lei in two years. And now no one asks, who will pay? It's not Ceban; it's us, the Chisinau residents. As a result of his activities, there are hundreds of lawsuits for tens, if not hundreds of millions of lei.

The PAS Party appointees cover up the illegal activities of Ion Ceban and his entourage. For example, the National Anti-Corruption Center (NACC) refused to let us investigate the crimes of the mayor's office in the interests of the Shor-Andronachi faction in the National Hotel case. Here it is appropriate to mention the State Chancellery, the Financial Inspectorate and the Court of Accounts, who are engaged in anything but inspections of Ceban's activities.

For the Chisinau mayoral elections, the ideal scenario is a single independent candidate from the centrist and right-wing parties, who would be able to oppose the populist Ceban. But there is no such candidate today.

INFOTAG: The war in Ukraine is being used by the authorities to justify lapses in the domestic agenda for the country. How long can this go on?

Stefan GLIGOR: We in the “Party of Changes” believe that the biggest failure has been made by PAS Party in domestic politics. And therein lies the paradox. Moldova has a huge external support and an unprecedented chance to become an European Union member state. We have the status of a candidate country. And it happened absolutely unexpectedly. We jumped onto the bandwagon of the European community thanks to the trust in President Maia Sandu, Ukrainian diplomacy and the heroic stance of the Ukrainian people and their leadership.

But integrating into the EU and getting membership is a huge job. It is a foreign policy implemented through domestic politics. But there are a lot of problems with domestic policy in Moldova. We have not implemented in full all the obligations in the Association Agreement with the EU. That was the first step. And Moldova is already on the second. The task is to move rapidly and convincingly along the road of reforms: to change the tax system - to reduce the burden of payments for small and medium-sized enterprises with a turnover up to 1 million lei per year. These are the people who leave in droves because of the unbearable policy of the authorities. We need a positive tax discrimination. Small business should be the lifeblood of the economy. But what we see is different, people refuse to fight corruption and bureaucracy and leave. We need to follow the Romanian model. They have micro-enterprises - turnover is up to 1 million euros and the tax is 1% of the turnover. Accounting is simplified - it is done automatically on the basis of invoices.

It is necessary to boldly introduce a moratorium on inspections of small and medium-sized businesses. If PAS is not capable of economic and tax reforms, then let it at least protect small entrepreneurs from the corruption of inspection bodies and the bureaucracy of government officials.

Moldova needs a moratorium on any state inspections for small businesses for five years. This will give confidence in the future. If the state is not able to help, let it not interfere with business development. The essence of our proposals is simple: if the state cannot give jobs and decent wages, then the way will leave alone those who work in their small enterprise and create jobs.

INFOTAG: Are there real risks of destabilizing the situation in Transnistria?

Stefan GLIGOR: If the authorities wanted to bring order to the Transnistrian region, it would suffice for them to apply the provisions of the Criminal Code already in force. It is much more important to apply the laws, including in the fight against corruption and organized crime, than to create new ones. The corrupt elites of Moldova have always found a common language with their Transnistrian counterparts. Corrupt officials from Ukraine and Romania also joined these processes at one time with one sole purpose - to obtain the money for smuggling and schemes. And when Transnistria will not be a source for regional criminal groups - there will be preconditions for the resolution of the Transnistrian conflict.

In the archives of the Prosecutor's Office, there is an 800-volume case of smuggling from Transnistria, involving the "Sheriff" group. All that should be done is to bring its owners to justice. As soon as these persons are brought to justice, the so-called Transnistrian conflict will end. The PAS Party for the past 1.5 years could not even use what is already in the country, and is looking for some workarounds.

We just need to apply the law and end the smuggling and corruption activities related to the region. In this case, Moldova (from 2011 to 2016) participated in the investigation of international smuggling schemes as part of an international investigation team. There were searches of cigarette factories in Italy and Bulgaria. Under the guise of Moldovan political pseudo-elites, 26 criminal groups on the right and left banks of the Dniester River, including "Sheriff", were engaged in smuggling.

Fugitive Vladimir Plahotniuc, Veaceslav Platon, Ilan Shor, continue to influence the policy in Moldova. Channels of receipt of dirty money are not blocked. The "Shor" Party again received financial injections from incomprehensible sources and prepares new protests. In such a situation there is a threat of destabilization of the situation. Unfortunately, the ruling majority does not have a full understanding of what is happening in the country and what to do about it.

INFOTAG: Thank you for the interview!