Analyst: potential non-Communist alliance may have the same problems as the one in 1998

Igor Botan, head of the Association for Participatory Democracy, told Imedia in an interview yesterday that „to a large degree, the situation today is similar to the one in 1998, when the Alliance for Democracy and Reforms was put together. PC's announcement that it is ready to withdraw into the ranks of the opposition actually says that the party is ready to throw Moldova's ruined economy into the hands of the so-called liberals and democrats, so that it can later claim that while the Communists were in power there was economic growth, and that once the democrats came to power, the same thing that happened when the Alliance for Democracy and Reforms was in power began once more.”

In 1998, when the Communists held 40 seats in the legislature, numerous non-Communist parties created the Alliance for Democracy and Reforms, which led to the formation of a reformist Government. Disagreements that appeared within the alliance, caused to some degree by displeasure with seat distributions, led to its disintegration in 2000 and an overwhelming Party of Communists victory one year later.

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