Under the pretext of supporting the fight against corruption, the West wants to impose in the Republic of Moldova a political class ready to turn the country against Russia.
NEWS: “Under the pretext of the fight against corruption, the West is expecting from the President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, to first fight with her political rivals in order to ensure the country's anti-Russian orientation. This opinion was expressed by the journalist and former deputy in the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Ludmila Belcencova, on the show “The Action Mechanism”, with Elena Levitkaia-Pahomova, Noi.md reports. “The West demands from the president, under the pretext of supporting the fight against corruption, to fight with her political opponents and expects one thing: to see Moldova in line with Ukraine and other countries unfriendly to Russia, to have Moldova adopt an anti-Russian orientation” , she said […]”.
NARRATIVE: The fight against corruption is just a pretext for eliminating politicians who do not want the Republic of Moldova to be used by the West against Russia.
LOCAL CONTEXT / ETHOS: The President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, built her political career and managed to win the electoral race for the first position in the state with the help of an anti-corruption speech. However, the President has few levers at her disposal to impose her agenda, given that the executive power is held by a government appointed by Parliament. The main reason why it was considered necessary to hold early parliamentary elections was that the former configuration of the legislature - dominated by Socialists and parties led by oligarchs who fled the country to avoid paying for their crimes - does not reflect the will of the electorate, which opted for Maia Sandu and, implicitly, for her agenda. Officially, Maia Sandu cannot get involved in the election campaign, but she openly supports the party she led until she became president, PAS, and the latter has clearly assumed the president's agenda. Given this close association between Maia Sandu and PAS, discrediting the former decreases the chances of the latter.
On the other hand, the Republic of Moldova is one of the most corrupt European countries, an essential piece in the so-called Russian Laundromat (or “Moldovan mechanism”) in the early years of the last decade, through which an at least 20 billion dollars were laundered. Also, around the same time, about 1 billion dollars disappeared from the country's top three banks. Endemic corruption keeps Moldova in a gray area, as the country lacks credibility in the eyes of Western politicians and investors. Such a high level of corruption undermines any attempt at European integration, which coincides with Moscow's goals. Apart from Russia, the criminal networks in the CIS and the corrupt system (with ramifications in the economic, political and judicial areas) of the Republic of Moldova are directly interested in the fight against corruption not taking off.
The fact that the fight against corruption is a serious concern for some circles is also proven by the proliferation of narratives against it; Veridica has recently written about fakenews on a similar topic launched by the Kremlin's propaganda arm, Sputnik.
PURPOSE: To undermine the parties that have an anti-corruption agenda. To discredit the fight against corruption, in order to keep the Republic of Moldova in a gray area.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The Western partners of the Republic of Moldova (the EU, the USA) call for strengthening the rule of law, the reform of the judiciary and the fight against corruption, but the issue of blacklisting people in order to arrest them has never been raised; on the contrary, the strengthening of the rule of law implies, inter alia, the very elimination of arbitrary decisions in court and keeping the justice system away from any political or economic influence. The rule of law entails predictability and the guarantee that private investments are safe and any aid provided by various states to the Republic of Moldova is not misappropriated.
Disinformation uses a variety of manipulation tactics. Disinformation stories can easily be created by combining provocative topics.
ReportNot even the most optimistic supporters of the Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) were expecting a landslide victory in the early parliamentary election. PAS didn’t just face left-wing parties, represented by the Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists, but Russia itself, which tried to lend the latter a helping hand. Yet its victory is only the beginning: the real challenge for PAS lies ahead.
FAKE NEWS: The right-wing bought votes in the Diaspora
The alleged election fraud, including bribe-giving, was one of the hot topics in the Republic of Moldova on election day. While media outlets siding with pro-European parties revealed alleged cases of bribe reported on the left bank of the Dniester, the pro-Socialist press focused on offenses reported abroad. One the main “arguments” about influencing voters in the Diaspora was a short video filmed by a young girl queuing outside a polling station in Frankfurt, Germany. In the background one can hear a few people talking and laughing, mentioning 50 Euro. A large number of press institutions affiliated to the Socialists carried the piece of news, suggesting the video is evidence that voters got bribed. The person who shot the video subsequently said it was all a joke, and that the media made erroneous assumptions.
DEMAGOG 2021. The Chisinau Report, No. 5: Radio Yerevan
disinformation, manipulative stories and fake news continued to flood the media as usual. Maia Sandu, PAS and the West were again the favorite targets of disinformation and fake narratives. Fake news authors were pretty much unimaginative, as they have been over the course of the entire campaign, resorting to narratives they used before, both in the current campaign, as well as in previous ones: a victory for the right-wing would spell disaster for the country