Deep Dive: Campaign Platforms and Promises
Part 2: A look at how the parties would address Moldova's biggest challenges
Hey everyone! This article is a bit of a long one. I think you’ll enjoy it, but as a tip up front - I use a lot of footnotes here as explainers. If you’re reading this by email, I suggest either opening the article in a browser, or downloading the substack app. Both options will let you jump back and forth on footnotes or hover over them to see the text pop up.
Last Saturday in Part 1 we looked at how the top 4 parties in the election approached their party programs. In it I wrote about how they each structured and approached their campaign platform and what the top-line themes and focus are. Today we’re going to dive into 5 policy areas and see what each party says about them. But first, if you missed Part 1 I suggest starting there:
I’ve decided to approach this topic from the following 5 areas:
Economics / Infrastructure
EU Integration / Geopolitics
National Security
Justice and Corruption
Miscellaneous (a grab bag of additional interesting, fun or weird things)
The parties themselves have different organizing principles for their programs as we discussed in Part 1. I’ve chosen these focus areas for a few reasons. Firstly, they encompass the main issues that the parties themselves are putting forward. Each has a different focus, but in these 5 areas we see their main arguments come through.
Secondly, I’ve focused on areas that are of the most interest to international readers. Within Moldova, education policy would certainly trump national security policy in any poll, but it is less salient for people who don’t have kids in Moldovan schools (as I think few of my readers do). Finally, whether or not polls might indicate a greater or lesser public focus on certain policy areas, I think these 4 (+misc) constitute the big ideas that will ultimately decide the election.
Ok, let’s dive in.
