At the time of the assessment in January and February 2010, the big question was if and when parliament would be dissolved or if the constitution would be amended to change the way the president was elected. The Constitutional Court subsequently ruled in March that parliament must be dissolved if it had not elected a president and that parliament could only be dissolved once a year, which extended the Alliance for European Integration’s mandate until at least June 2010.

Moldova has problems in all five elements of democracy and governance identified in the Democracy and Governance Framework – consensus, rule of law, competition, inclusion, and governance. Many of these stem from its divided society, polarized politics, and the concentration of power in highly centralized systems dominated by the executive and personalistic ruling political parties, which dominate the competitive arena creating and imbalanced playing field and weakening the checks and balance system, perpetuating the problem. The judiciary lacks independence, parliament and local government are marginalized, opposition parties are fractured, and the media sector is dominated by a few controlled outlets. This, in turn, limits accountability, government transparency, and broad-based participation, which breeds citizen apathy and mistrust. These problems are interrelated and mutually reinforcing.