2020’s electoral lessons: Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine

Moldovan President Maia Sandu on her official visit to Ukraine to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Photo: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE

In Ukraine, amid the territorial-administrative decentralisation efforts and electoral reform, the local elections brought to the frontline a new generation of locally-grown politicians. They obtained more tools to counter-balance the big political parties in charge in Kyiv. Local democracy got a chance to shine, but long-term success depends on how the political newcomers can be protected from being subordinated by the oligarchs.

The issue of oligarchy is still pervasive in Georgia. The elimination of the corruption-conducive mixed voting system through public protest definitely pushed the country in the right direction. Despite that, the oligarchs continue to have a veto-role on the parliamentary majority that emerged out of the elections. Moldova, meanwhile, stepped forward by electing a pro-reform president who is determined to fight corruption and other remnants of the pre-2020 oligarchic regime. The path towards a state free of corruption has many challenges lying ahead.

A promising start

Against some expectations, Moldovan voters elected a new president without having to go through a “coloured revolution”. Nearly 943,000 citizens voted for the first female president of the country, converting the former prime Minister, Maia Sandu, as the sixth president of Moldova. She was among the favourites from the onset. Nevertheless, the majority of pre-electoral polls were indicating that the incumbent Igor Dodon had the clear advantage for re-election. Nothing helped Sandu more than the historical mobilisation of the diaspora and the united anti-Dodon position of the major political forces of the country.

Primarily, the impressive electoral gathering of the diaspora is related to the active use of Facebook, where Sandu has around 236,000 followers, many of whom are members of the diaspora. Other social media platforms are either less relevant in Moldova or unable to connect actively with large groups of citizens. Notably, the diaspora with whom Sandu interacts via Facebook has had a special role in her political career since her first attempt to win the 2016 presidential elections. Back then, the diaspora mobilised about 67,000 voters in the first round and doubled it in the runoff to 138,720. Twice as many diaspora voters showed up in 2020 and even queued at polling stations in the second round of elections. That constitutes about one-quarter of Sandu’s voters and 16 per cent of the total voters who participated in the runoff on November 15th. Around 90 per cent of the votes from the diaspora went for Sandu. The majority of those votes came from Moldovan citizens residing or temporarily working in other European countries or on the other side of the Atlantic. Sandu can use her privileged relationship with the diaspora to the advantage of her political party – the Action and Solidarity Party – in the inevitable early parliamentary elections in 2021. In this regard, she has already underlined the urgent need of introducing electronic votes, which could enhance the pool of potential voters interested in reforming the governance of Moldova from a distance.

Last but not least, the mobilisation of the anti-Dodon vote was just as impactful as the diaspora factor. This explains why Sandu’s victory occurred not only due to her electoral campaign but also because of the failure of the incumbent to clean up his troubled image. A series of scandals unfolded in 2020 which involved Dodon: his corrupt ties with the previous oligarchic regime; the obscure almost subservient relationship with Russia and its intelligence services; and the arrogance in handling the pandemic. Though only the latter has consistent evidence, Dodon cannot avoid political responsibility, if not a legal one, to prove his innocence concerning bribes allegedly received from the fugitive oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc and the accusations of espionage in favour of Moscow. Altogether these circumstances made Igor Dodon an easy target for almost all eight candidates during the presidential election – from the anti-corruption Sandu to pro-Romanian unionist Octavian Ticu. Consequently, various segments of voters have campaigned against Dodon, supporting his rival Maia Sandu in the runoff.

Maia Sandu’s victory creates a four-year certainty about at least one pro-reform centre of power. This represents a necessary starting point for subsequent changes in other state institutions. After the fall of Sandu’s government in 2019, she knows that only through harmony between the executive and legislative branches of power, qualitative and enduring changes can materialise. To this end, Sandu needs early parliamentary elections that can reset the parliament as well as the government. Any scenario that involves early elections could develop smoother together with the socialists, led by Dodon, than resisting them at the cost of constitutional predictability and the eventual deepening of the political crisis. A Georgia-like situation, where the European Union and the United States facilitated political dialogue between the ruling Georgian Dream party and the opposition, could be beneficial. Lacking some constructive external mediation, the Russia-leaning socialists and Sandu’s political allies seem trapped with distrust and animosities that could pave the way towards political instability.

Between oligarchy and political crisis

The political situation in Georgia is gradually overcoming structural shortcomings. This refers to the mixed voting system which allowed the oligarchic Georgian Dream party to gain comfortable majorities in the parliament which requires 76 out of 150 seats to rule. Over the last eight years, the Georgian Dream obtained 85 seats in 2012, and 115 seats in 2016. In this way, the party managed to monopolise power and exploited the system.

Social pressure in 2019 and 2020 pushed the government and the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili to allow a change in the election system through the gradual elimination of the mixed elements. Initially, the electoral reform was proposed for 2024 but the opposition used the public protests to advance the application of the proportional system already in the 2020 elections. The mediation of the EU delegation in Tbilisi and the US embassy was instrumental in setting up a middle ground during complicated negotiations which ended with the so-called “March Agreement”. First, the election of 120 out of 150 members of parliament is run through a purely proportional system, leaving aside another 30 seats elected via a mixed system based on majoritarian constituencies (winner takes all). The same principle applies to any eventual first iteration of early elections triggered between 2020 and 2024. Second, in the context of the same negotiations, the Georgian Dream and the opposition agreed to de-politicise the judicial process. This led to the releasing of several opposition representatives, such as Giorgi Rurua, Irakli Okruashvili and Gigi Ugulava, sentenced between 2019 and 2020.

Despite the larger application of the proportional system, the Georgian Dream successfully retained its majority, receiving 90 seats in the election last October. The opposition parties, gathering at least eight political forces, including Mikhail Saakashvili’s United National Movement, contested these results. The opposition refuses to enter parliament and is calling to repeat the elections. For a second time in one year, the EU and US ambassadors – Carl Hartzell and Kelly Degnan, respectively – aimed at playing the role of mediators trying to find a suitable solution to the stalemate, though less successful than previously. The European side supports a plan proposed by Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream, which includes more electoral reforms.

The Georgian Dream came up with some political tricks as well, such as organising a referendum about the need to have new parliamentary elections in the fall of 2021. That would give time for the Georgian Dream to regroup while in between gaining domestic and external legitimacy. Since they pursue the goal of quickly stabilising the country, the EU and the US have trapped themselves into the roles of mediators in negotiations between Ivanishvili’s party and the opposition, which share a deep mistrust of each other. To overcome the perpetuated political stalemate, the Georgian Dream will have to accommodate the opposition’s claims. That should start with dropping the retaliatory reflexes against the opposition through cutting access to budget funds and public broadcasting. In turn, the opposition needs to develop a feasible way out of the crisis, without losing the supervision power over the oligarchy-centric majority. European integration and security aspects are at stake in the country that neighbours both Russia and Turkey, two powers that began to fortify their regional positions in the aftermath of the 2020 Russia-brokered Armenia-Azerbaijan ceasefire agreement and the Moscow-Ankara bilateral deal about a joint observation mission in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The falling hope in Zelenskyy

The local elections in Ukraine did not play out in favour of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Servant of the People party. In these elections, Zelenskky’s political power, which he amassed in 2019, has all but vanished. The results published by the Central Election Commission, with a delay of several weeks strongly criticised by the National Security Committee, showed relatively little achievements for the ruling party. The 2019 abundance of votes changed with a more proportional electoral outcome. The Servant of the People party came in first place at the oblast and rayon levels – 17.6 per cent and 16.9 per cent, respectively. It also secured second place at a lower territorial administrative level, where the local representatives won between 19 per cent and 47 per cent of the seats.

Other prominent parties gained between nine per cent and 16 per cent of the votes each, including European Solidarity, the Opposition Platform For Life, the party For Future, and Fatherland. A significant share of votes, 27 per cent, went to regional political parties, formed around local leaders. Therefore, the freshly elected representatives of the local councils come from 110 political parties. Although this maximises local democracy, it might contribute to further detachment of local politics from national politics, embodied by the seven biggest parties represented in the 2019-elected parliament.

Zelesnkyy’s declining popularity is seen as one of the causes of his party’s somewhat stagnant election result during the local polls. An October 2020 survey had suggested that decided voters are turning their backs on the previously adored Zelenskyy and his party. They did not recover from the dismantling of the anti-corruption policies as well as the dismissing of the pro-reform government in 2019. Electoral support for the president dropped from 40 per cent in April to 33 per cent right before the October local elections. The public’s interest in the Servant of the People party deflated too – from 29.9 per cent in April to 18.7 per cent in November – among voters with defined political options. Dissatisfaction varied across the country, being more predominant in regions laying eastward, neighbouring Ukrainian territories where separatism flourishes with Russian support. Though, it is noteworthy that dissatisfaction with Zelenskyy is still lower than reluctance towards the old guard. Other pro-EU top politicians, like Petro Poroshenko or Yulia Tymoshenko, are twice as unpopular as Zelenskyy. In the case of the Russia-leaning politicians such as Yuriy Boyko and Viktor Medvedchuk, the differences are three or four times.

This aspect indicates that Zelenskyy’s eroding popularity is not the only or primary cause that predetermined the outcome of the local elections. In reality, the reasons are multiple and break down to two major elements – low turnout, partially provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the united effect of the electoral and decentralisation reforms. The reduced turnout intensified the competition between more numerous parties than previously. Only about 36.9 per cent (or 10.5 million people) of registered voters showed up for the first round in 2020, compared to 46.5 per cent for the 2015 local elections.

Additionally, voters from the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donbas, as well as of the annexed Crimea, did not vote for obvious reasons. That corresponds to 18 territorial communities and about 500,000 voters. Some of the voiced reasons for low turnout are the public health conditions (20 per cent), a lack of local residency registration (19 per cent) and, of course, the pandemic (10 per cent). Therefore, the pandemic should not be overlooked as a factor of significant public de-mobilisation. From early October until the day of the first round of votes, October 25th, daily infections varied between around 4,000 and 7,000 cases. At the same time, it affected the overall performance of Zelenskyy’s party among voters who probably decided to cast a vote of blame against the poor management of the pandemic.

Greater competition

New electoral rules embedded in the 2019 Electoral Code entered into force in July 2020. Apart from replacing the mixed system with the proportional open party-list voting, the revised electoral norms introduce the obligation for mayoral candidates to set-up political parties. As a result, voters could choose from over 360 political parties, which diversified the electoral options and diluted the monopoly of national parties. The new electoral reforms came with the decentralisation process which retained more finances to the local authorities and redrew territorial-administrative divisions, diminishing the number of the rayons (administrative regions) from 490 to 136. 1,400 new local communities formed after the merging when the local elections took place. The code also imposed a 40 per cent gender criteria for the composition of party lists for the local elected administrations. The current electoral cycle confirmed that the diaspora is willing to return and engage politically.

It is certain that the Servant of the People faced greater competition this time around. This was the first local elections for the party and competition came primarily from new political entities that harnessed the grievances of the increasingly dissatisfied public. Moreover, the domination of incumbent political networks, with “family-clan” roots, remained relatively unchallenged, allowing the re-election of old elites in cities like Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv. Another negative trend relates to the launching of new political projects by oligarchs such as Ihor Kolomoiskyy’s For Future party which received about 11 per cent (or more than 100,000) of the votes.

All in all, the electoral processes in Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine have proved that positive democratic changes are difficult to achieve, but still quite possible. Oligarchs maintain their influence on decision-making, but the opposition during and after elections continuously challenges them. Local political newcomers and the diaspora are turning into key players, shaking up the status quo. Nevertheless, profound and lasting political transformations in these EU-associated countries necessitate protecting walls of rule of law and robust anti-corruption filters.

Denis Cenusa is a PhD candidate and researcher at the Institute of Political Science at the Giessen University in Germany. He is an associate expert at the “Expert-Grup” think tank in Moldova and a contributor at IPN News Agency in Moldova since 2015.

Eastern Europe, elections, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine