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Moldavskiye Vedomosti published an article by the leader of Moldavian National-Republican Party Nikolay Andronik, where he comments on the domestic and foreign policy of the Moldavian authorities, the gas problem and prospects of its resolution. REGNUM publishes the article with the author’s permission.

Nikolay Andronik: “The problem of gas prices has been getting increasingly acute as the United States has been getting increasingly persistent in pushing its interests in the post-Soviet area. However friendly George Bush and Vladimir Putin may seem, an unbiased observer can see that such a rivalry between the West — not as much Europe as the US — and Russia will, certainly, have some consequences, and for Moldova too.”

The attempts of the Moldavian authorities to shift all their failures onto “Russia’s schemes” and their naive hopes that the West will solve all their problems have made these problems even deeper.

All this dashing from side to side has revealed their banal incompetence, confusion and incomprehension of how an efficient authority in an independent state should act. Instead of addressing specific problems, an authority should be busy with, President Vladimir Voronin is busy with searching for enemies and propaganda.

In the story with petrol the authorities beautifully discoursed on growing oil prices worldwide, but did nothing to help petrol producers. People were assured that they would not feel the growth but were deceived once again: everybody felt it. All goods are growing in price, including the essentials and the food, while the government is telling stories that it is keeping inflation in check.

The next “signal” was in the electricity engineering. The Moldavian City Power Distribution Plant has announced intention to raise its electricity price. The Moldavian authorities do not want to agree with RAO UES Russia and are convincing everybody that Romania will help us, even though Romania too buys electricity from Russia and Ukraine and is ready to give it to Moldova at twice the price the MCPDP has asked. Ukraine is yet covering Moldova’s electricity shortage but is also raising the import tariffs.

And finally there was “a gas explosion.” Russia has made it clear that it will build its relations with neighbors on market basis. With the US and Russia vying in our region, any country here is forced to openly say who it is with — Washington or Moscow. The proverb that a tender calf sucks two darns is no longer true here. In the gas story Voronin drove himself into a trap, like he did with the Transdnestr problem — when he first tried to solve the problem with Russia’s help and then laid the whole blame on the international community and washed his hands.

Voronin’s “ostrich” behavior could be already seen in his speech in In Profunzime on PRO TV. To the insistent questions “And what with gas?” he laughed off and giggled that everything is OK, there will be no surprises, and the population will feel nothing. Quite an inadequate way for a president to act. His hostage is also the government, who is hardly expected to articulate anything at all — for the executive power, just like the legislative and the judiciary ones, is just a puppet in the hands of the presidential administration.

If we had a normal, responsible government, it would have cared many months ago to set up some commission to examine the problems and to offer solutions. It was clear long ago that the gas price would grow. We needed some changes in the budget to compensate the population for the rise in tariffs and the ensuing growth in the commodity and service costs. Growing gas tariff will inevitably send the prices up — since working on gas are thermal power plants, communal economy, manufacturing companies, food industry. And so, it is strange to hear the economy minister assuring people that they will not suffer from the rise. We just can pity him if he actually takes for normal the illegal and unchecked felling of woods and hopes that wood can replace gas for all. This “wise” policy may turn Moldova into a steppe of stubs, with the gas, electricity and oil prices continuing their steady growth.

In the same TV show Voronin was ardently telling the audience how energy problems would be solved in the framework of GUAM. He described breathtaking prospects — gas and oil pipelines running from Iran and Norway, Moldova’s energy unification with Europe and so on. Does he actually take all TV viewers for dumb-heads unable to understand that such projects take billions and decades and still give no guarantee of cheaper energy? The prices are already growing, and Moldova is already facing the risk of being left without light and gas, while Voronin goes on telling his tales about bright future coming from Iran and Norway (“forgetting” to mention that the gas from Norway is much more expensive than that from Russia, and that Norway is already hardly satisfying even its rich EU partners).

Listening to the president, I was asking myself: what is this? incompetence? or he is just making fools of us? And I inferred that this is both: Voronin simply does not know what to do and is trying to cover his flops by false propaganda.

The first time Voronin spoke seriously about the gas problem was Jan 2, when Gazprom had already stopped supplying gas to Ukraine and Moldova. “Just look how bad Russia is!,” brawled Voronin’s propaganda. (That Russia is “bad” we understood in 2001, when it brought Voronin into power, and now it would better take him back). But again, all we got was declarations on political pressure and Russia’s attempts to provoke crisis in Moldova. And we never got any clear solution to the problem at all.

Like the whole last year, Voronin was in the same harness with the presidents of Ukraine and Georgia, who like Chip ‘n Dale were in constant rush to rescue him since his electoral campaign. But this time the Georgian and Ukraine “rescue rangers” left their Chisinau colleague alone. First to “come off” was Mikhail Saakashvili, who signed with Gazprom a deal on $110 per 1,000 c m of gas, then followed Viktor Yushchenko who was “broken” into accepting Gazprom’s $230 tariff. But if Ukraine insured itself beforehand by contracting on cheap gas with Turkmenistan, Voronin has just now produced a telegram that Turkmenbashi is ready to start talks on gas supplies. But they have yet to sign the contract and then to pump the Turkmen gas for several thousands kilometers through the Gazprom pipeline, which can hardly afford necessary supplies even for Russia and Ukraine.

As a result, Moldova is the only country having no deals on gas and is presently getting gas in contraband — on the basis of a phone talk between Yushchenko and Voronin. Yushchenko has got Voronin to agree to Ukraine’s accession into WTO and to sign under their joint address to the EU where they accuse Russia of exerting political pressure. But Ukraine has, in the meantime, made gas contracts, with Yushchenko having signed with Vladimir Putin a joint statement on the Transdnestr conflict settlement – a document Voronin much disliked — and having gone to Kazakhstan to meet with Putin and to propose him laying a new gas pipeline from Russia to Europe via Ukraine. As to the Moldavian president, he is taking one ball from his gateway just to see the next getting into it and is left face to face with Gazprom and with the quite unacceptable consolidated position of Russia and Ukraine on Transdnestr.

They in Kiev are obviously manipulating Voronin, while they in Moscow are simply unable to take seriously the Moldavian authorities, who send telegrams with charges against Russia to Brussels in the morning, just to send delegations with requests to sell Moldova cheaper gas in the afternoon.

How can one take seriously leaders who are indignant at how Moldova has been building its relations with Gazprom for years, if the Communist faction led by Voronin has voted, at one time, for giving Russia gas pipelines, for giving Gazprom Moldova Gas’ controlling interest and for giving the Russian company bills that hang Moldova Gas’ $230 mln debt over the government’s head. Voronin says that by allotting money for gas supply the government raises the capitalization of Moldova Gas, whose most shares belong to Gazprom. But let’s ask another question: why doesn’t this authority protect the interests of people who spend on gas supply much more than the government does? In order to have gas pipes installed in their houses some people spend up to 10,000 lei, just to later be forced to transfer them all for nothing to the balance of Moldova Gas — in fact, to grant them to Gazprom. Logically, either the company should bring the service to a client, that is, to lay a gas pipe, or give him some shares, if he has a contribution in the increase of Moldova Gas’ fixed assets. But for some reason the government does not care for this.

Instead of holding some professional, objective talks with Gazprom, the Moldavian authorities have fabricated one more big lie for people by telling them tales day and night that our country is very close to being admitted into the EU. But recently the EU chair Austria said once more that Moldova will not see EU membership, primarily because it is not ready for one. Exactly like Voronin deceived people with Moldova’s joining the Russian-Byelorussian Union, he is now deceiving them with the EU. Unfortunately, people believe him and are waiting for an uncle from Brussels to come, feed and dress them and give them cheap gas and light. But there will be no “freebie” — either European or Russian. Romanian President Traian Basescu has made this clear: one should pay for freedom, just look at the gas prices in England and Norway and stop complaining about expensive gas from Russia.

Europe has shown that it does not want to interfere into the gas “squabbles” of Ukraine and Moldova with Russia. Yushchenko has masterly used Voronin in his games to have his problem resolved somehow, while Voronin has not. Europe makes it clear that this is a commercial problem, but Voronin has made the problem purely political so as to cover his failures and inability to govern his country and agree with Russia.

With the Russian gas costing $230/1,000 c m for Ukraine and $285/1,000 for Romania, Gazprom’s demand for raising the tariff from $80 to $160 for Moldova looks all but strange. And Moldova will sooner or later have to sign the new contract.

It is easy to predict how the authorities will act after the gas price grows. First ANRE (National Agency for Energy Regulation — REGNUM) will linger for as long as it can to announce the new internal gas tariff only when the winter ends — just to write off the difference between the new internal tariff and the gas export price as the losses of Moldova Gas. When loitering proves no longer possible, the authorities will think out some new trick like they did with the phone talk: they will give pensioners 10 c m of cheap gas at the old price, while all that is above and what will come for the industry will be sold triple-price. But this will be one more lie: the pensioners will see no changes in their new bills but the authorities will “forget” to explain to them that growing in price again are food, garment, travel in city transport. Even if they explain, they will say that this all is due the “hard legacy” of the “destroyer-democrats”.

Until now the government’s sole intellectual effort to ensure energy security has been to set up a staff to search for alternative energy sources. The sources have been found: wind, sun and bio-mass. This regime takes everybody for idiots. Though they too need big investments too, wind mills, sun batteries and methane from manure can, in no way, replace the key energy sources — oil, electricity, gas, coal.

Meanwhile, Moldova is facing another problem in its trade relations with Russia: a law on new alcohol marking procedure is taking force there to possibly deal no less strong a blow on Moldova’s economy than the growing gas prices did. A decline in the export of Moldavian wine to Russia will make Moldova’s trade balance deficit even larger, will have an impact on its banking sector (wine-makers are the key borrowers) and the budget. But the government is silent again and is pretending that there is no such problem. And if everything starts falling in the sphere they will again come up with charges against “bad Russia” and the internal “enemies of the people.”

Today the “red-orange” propaganda is accusing whoever dares to criticize the Chisinau authorities of “having sold themselves to Russia” and “being traitors.” But actual traitors are those who first promised the people gas for $50, then began paying for it $80 and now is risking to get it for $160. If real patriots are those politicians who seek to make the life of their people better, then the present authorities are anti-patriots because they are making the life yet worse and worse. If the “red-oranges” were actually with their people, they would not charge their opponents with being pro- or anti-Russians or Romanians, but would care for the prices not to grow and for the wages and pensions to grow tangibly rather than as shamefully slowing as they are now. If this requires agreement with Moscow, so it is necessary to agree with Moscow. If America can pay the growing Russian gas costs, it is necessary to agree with it.

Voronin has proved wrong in his calculations that the West will help him just because he is loudly railing at Russia. Judging from his dropping rating, at home too he is gaining no dividends from turning face to the West and back to Russia. The voters of the Communist Party voted for the party not to see its leaders behaving like People’s Front extremists who burn Russian flags during street actions. Of course, Voronin may join the Front and announce that he and the Front will annex Moldova to Romania for them to jointly move towards Europe. But they in Europe will hardly understand such a demarche. And what will Voronin say then — that the EU is also bad? I will not be surprised if the president will eat Europe’s vitriol too when everybody understands that the hopes for a “freebie” from Brussels have gone to rack and ruin. // Regnum.ru