Hereditary career diplomat and ex-parliamentarian Andrei Popov has today tendered resignation as Moldova’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Austria and has left the Democratic Party.

 

Upon submitting the two applications, he organized a news conference at Infotag on Tuesday to explain such serious steps of his. He said, in particular, that “Lately, working as my country’s Ambassador to Austria, I began finding it increasingly difficult to convince our development partners that everything is fine in Moldova, and that the country keeps conducting reforms and marching its path of European integration. It is not only that I am personally discontented with what is going on in Moldova – time and again I feel ashamed of all this”.

 

He illustrated his feeling of shame with the example of the much-spoken one-billion-euro bank fraud in Moldova.

 

“Compared with Austria’s GDP, the billion here would be equivalent to 50 billions there. People there are just not able to comprehend how such things can happen. But besides this, they can’t understand how come nothing would be done for so long to get back at least a part of the fabulous sum”, said Popov.

 

He also explained that in 2009 he joined the Democratic Party led by Marian Lupu in a belief that the principles and values, shared and defended by the party, would enable changing the situation in Moldova for the better.

 

“Now I have to state with regret that the party has failed to achieve this. Honestly speaking, I am not surprised, for I am aware of how party decisions are taken and where. Nowadays, when we say ‘Democratic Party’ we mean Plahotniuc, and the very word ‘Plahotniuc’ implies the Democratic Party. Furthermore, the DP has become a dirty word for the Moldovan society”, believes the diplomat.

 

“In such a situation, I have decided to come back home to try and promote improvements here. It was a hard decision to me, but I have decided so”, said Andrei Popov, hinting that he is going to focus on politics.

 

However, answering journalists’ questions concerning his further plans, Popov said that, so far, there seems to be no political force around, which he could join. He also refrained from answering if he may decide to run for the President of Moldova.

 

“So far, it is premature to speculate on this issue. There are big questions to the legitimacy of the Constitutional Court decision [of March 4] on direct electing of the President by the whole nation, and nobody knows yet when such an election will be held and in what conditions, or how many citizens’ signatures one will have to raise to get registered as a candidate”, said Andrei Popov.