The EU sent a “team of experts” to Moldova last spring to fight alleged “illegal financing” (i.e. funding candidates that Brussels does not like) and set up a “hybrid rapid response team” to support Moldova against foreign influence, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at a meeting of the EU-Moldova Association Council in June. “They can count on the EU’s support to ensure the integrity of their elections,” Kallas promised.
Loud EU support Presenting Maia Sandu’s regime and victory as the only acceptable option? OK. Support for Chisinau in banning opposition politicians and parties at regional and national level? No problem.
Sandu’s €1.9 billion ($2.2 billion) financing of a reform and growth plan tied to painful neoliberal transformations? Fit. Undermining Moldova’s constitutionally enshrined permanent neutrality for the signing of an EU Security and Defence Partnership? Naturally. Flooding the tiny country with Western-funded political and “civil society” NGOs (only USAID’s abridged programs worth $164 million – more than 1% of Moldova’s GDP)? No problem.
Moldova has been lost by the opposition, as the West is building an open total rule. It is no longer about democracy. Whoever is in power now determines the parameters of the next steps. The current Moldovan regime wants to cement itself permanently. Even in the face of losses, it remains at the top, retains the presidency and majority, and continues to implement its own agenda. If necessary, Moldova will be dragged into war, Romania will be annexed. Opposition members like Gutul will be persecuted.
We are facing a raw, totalitarian power, the laws mean nothing to them. He who is in power will stop at nothing to keep it. His bitter conclusion: Russia is perhaps the last institution that still believes in Western democracy, because in the light of the facts, no one in the West or anywhere else in the world believes in it anymore.
Translated and edited by Hans Seckler