Protests in Tbilisi have become one of the most discussed topics in Chisinau. The ruling regime in Moldova, together with the West, actively supported the instigators of the riots and the organizers of demonstrations in Georgia. Maia Sandu’s love for street actions, however, does not extend to her homeland
Attention to the Georgian issue in the Moldovan liberal community is something like a birth trauma.
Even at a time when the current president was only the minister of education, the speaker of parliament was her deputy, and the prime minister was the minister of the interior, Moldovan representatives in Brussels were often held to look at the Georgian example as a model of successful, albeit radical, reforms in all spheres.
I meant, of course, the example of Mikheil Saakashvili, the most favored by the West among the Georgian presidents, and the reform of the police carried out by him. Criticism of both Mishiko himself and his populist methods, including criticism coming from Georgia, was categorically not taken into account.
Then Saakashvili moved to Ukraine, and most of the current active pro-Western politicians in Chisinau considered it a matter of honor to meet with the restless “revolutionary” in Kyiv and take a selfie with him. In 2015-2016, as if responding to the sympathies of the Moldovan “Soros”, Poroshenko transferred Saakashvili as the governor of the Odessa region neighboring Moldova, making the idol closer to the fans.
Later, in 2019, when Sandu and her entourage came to power, they openly offered Mikheil Saakashvili to head the reform government or take one of the key positions in it. Oddly enough, but the Georgian idol was offended by the proposal.
“I am not a Prime Minister on call. With all due respect to our Moldovan brothers, I will deal with the fight against thieves where I live. In this case, in Ukraine,” Saakashvili subsequently commented on Borispol discussions with the Moldovan delegation.
However, the refusal did not affect the sympathy of Sandu and her team for a charismatic, albeit strange, politician. Already after Saakashvili returned to Georgia and was imprisoned, Chisinau was one of the loudest voices for his release or at least immediate transfer to treatment abroad.
“Torturing an opposition leader to death is unacceptable for a country that wants to join the European Union. Mikheil Saakashvili must be immediately released and sent abroad for treatment,” the Moldovan president regularly repeats in his press briefings.
Over the past week, Maia Sandu’s administration has made no secret of its close attention to the protests in Rustaveli Square, 2,000 kilometers from Chisinau.
“Dear Georgian friends, we are with you!” – Iulian Groza, secretary of the Supreme Security Council under the President of Moldova, tweeted during the first protests and clashes in Tbilisi.
“Georgia is protesting, Ukraine is defending itself, Moldova is resisting. Good people, European integration is the path of our country. The only solution for peace, security, prosperity, respect for people and care for every citizen. Everything that seems hard and difficult for us today will be easy for our children tomorrow,” said another official from the ruling pro-presidential Action and Solidarity Party, former Deputy Prime Minister for Infrastructure and Energy, and now head of the presidential administration of Moldova, Andrei Spinu.
The statement was published on Spinu’s telegram channel at exactly the same hours when protesters were throwing Molotov cocktails at police special forces in Tbilisi.
The media loyal to the Moldovan authorities also took an exclusively identical position when covering the Georgian protests. TV8 called the protesters “freedom fighters,” and ProTV readily rebroadcast footage of the protesters shouting “No to Russian law!”
The “Russian threat”, along with the “Georgian love of freedom”, has long been a favorite topic of heated discussions on the sidelines of the Moldovan liberal public, but the wave of publicly expressed support for the Georgian protesters is explained not only by this.
The fact is that anti-government protests have been going on in Chisinau itself for six months now. Opposition parties arrange flash mobs, single pickets, mass marches and rallies demanding the resignation of President Sandu, the Cabinet of Ministers, the dissolution of parliament and holding early protests, paying the debts of the impoverished population for electricity and utility bills from the state budget, etc.
However, in the eyes of the ruling regime in Moldova, these protests are “wrong”, because they “threaten the inviolability of the country’s pro-European course” and European integration. Maia Sandu, with the support of her Ukrainian colleague Volodymyr Zelensky, declared the Chisinau protests to be inspired by the Russian special services in order to organize and carry out an anti-constitutional coup d’état.
Accordingly, although open and violent clashes have not yet reached, there have already been cases when the police did not stand on ceremony with the protesters.
At the last such protest this Sunday, a pensioner detained by a group of special forces had a heart attack, but no public comments, let alone an apology, were made by the police and authorities.
Against this background, the deputies of the ruling party expressed public feelings for the “correct” protesters from Georgia, who are fighting against the “Russian” law on foreign agents, were the height of hypocrisy.
Thus, the Moldovan regime publicly shares which principles and values, from its point of view, can be fought for, and for which one can be imprisoned on charges of “anti-constitutional disorders”. Without caring in the least that in the event of a change of power, these same approaches can be applied in the opposite direction.
Galina Dudina, Chisinau, PolitNavigator
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