170. President of Moldova, Maia Sandu: Holding the Line Between Democracy and Putin

32:00And this is just one instrument for them to influence us and to keep us from moving forward. So this is the base case scenario. But as I said, it's not only about Moldova. Moldova is not something very valuable to Russia. Moldova is just a testing ground and is a place which can be a land that can be used by Russia to move forward. Europe is the target Russia wants to control Europe. A lot of the people we spoke to preparing for this said that you were something of a reluctant politician and not in many ways a natural politician, quite shy and quite reserved and very protective of your own life and so forth.

32:44And yet, as you just said in your last answer but one, you literally started the political party from scratch. and we were talking to some of the people who were involved in the ground floor of that said it was it was literally like a startup just you and two or three people and then you built it very very quickly into a very successful political party you know i'm fascinated as to how you went about that how you did that and the other thing that everybody has said about you is that they keep saying you're utterly incorruptible how do you remain incorruptible within what was a corrupt political system i mean if you're an honest person, you are an honest person, no matter whether you're in politics, or you, you know, in business, or, but to get back to the first question, I've never planned to become a politician.

33:30I became a civil servant immediately after the university, because this were the first year of Moldova's independence. And this is when we were establishing estates. And people like me from the universities were invited to go to the ministries, because we had to start from scratch. It was interesting, but also at some point disappointing because we've seen the reforms fail again and again. So I had a pretty long experience as a civil servant. I've seen politicians and leaders of ministries of the government and of the country. Some of them were stupid. Some of them are corrupt. So I was getting pretty disappointed.

34:09At some point, I got this proposal to become the Minister of Education. And I was ready for a professional challenge. And I also, I didn't see it as a political position. I just thought, I'll go there, I'll do the reforms, I'll do what's right, and then that's it. And three years, I built a team there and we started to do some important reforms in education. And then we discovered that the rest of the government or many people in the ruling parties were actually involved in a massive banking sector fraud. This was the biggest corruption scheme, 12 % of GDP. And that's when I, of course, I left the government.

34:57And this happened while I was fighting corruption in the education sector, because we also had cheating at the exam. And I undertook, together with my colleagues. You were the only education minister ever to celebrate declining results. Yes, today we also have a very good minister of education, so I can't say that I'm the only one. And then, of course, it was very disappointing because on one hand, you could see that if you work hard, if you do the right thing, you can achieve some results. But then the rest of the country, while the leadership was saying that they were doing the EU integration and we just got the free trade regime and the visa regime and then you have this discovery that everything's going wrong so you know i i had a choice i either leave the country or i try to do politics differently because all the political parties in power or which had some support before they were led by corrupt people you don't want to pay taxes in a country so how did they react when you started a party?

36:02They didn't take me seriously and this was good because otherwise I would have not succeeded. So they just thought they thought for themselves that this is a bunch of kids who have no money, who have no political experience. You know, they will play a bit politics and then they will leave. And so we decided to create a political party. We didn't know what this was about. So we went to trainings to NDI and IRI and some other international institutions which were providing trainings to everyone. I mean all the political parties and then we announced that we went to create a political party actually people were looking for new political forces and then we told people we need because we needed to have a lot of members now we've changed the law we needed to have members in all the regions and so on and then we announced that if you want us to create a political party please come and help us and then people started to come and it was mostly old people and young people because they were not afraid of the regime because the pensioners said that they had nothing to lose.

37:03The regime was becoming really authoritarian. So it was an oligarch in power. He was corrupt, the guy, but the regime also. And they were very authoritarian. So like people who had businesses, they would be afraid to help us. People who work in state institutions, they would be afraid. But you have young people, you had young people, and then you had the pensioners. And this is how we started with the political party. and we had no money so i went public and i said we need your contributions if you want to have clean politics and moldovans were not aware of how political parties were being financed because there was not such a discussion and of course all the political parties were financed with dirty money and corruption was starting from the moment i mean the the political parties how the political parties would finance themselves.

37:54And then when they get into power, of course, this would extend the state institutions level. So when I said, we need your small donations, some people would say, you want to become a politician and you want us to pay for? So it was really in the polls, only 4 % of people, when we started that would say that they are ready to finance, to make contributions, 4 % of the people. So we had to teach people that this is how political party functions. So like for four years, we had just one employee in the political party who got a small salary and the rest of us were just doing full time voluntary work.

38:34I was lucky to have some savings from the time I worked at the World Bank, but it hasn't been easy. And now you're probably the lowest paid president in the world, I think. Well, I haven't looked at the statistics. I have a salary which is about 1000 euro per month and it's not just me who is the prime minister is the speaker of the parliament why is that because the law on salaries was developed by a previous government back in 2019 and when they did the scales and so on they would not for them they would have just some symbolic salaries not because they believe they deserve symbolic salaries but because of the corruption they had this envelope salaries so when we came to power it was an unpopular move to correct the law and this is how we ended up but we had to increase the salaries for the ministers and for the state secretaries because you know you need to have a decent salary for people to to afford to work for the government.

39:36Madam President you talk about these oligarchs but it's difficult for people to envisage I think who people like Plahao Ilanshaw are? I mean, what are their histories? What kind of, what does it mean to be an onagak in that sense? Well, these are people who had money at some point, and this money was not necessarily made in legal ways, but like this is the primitive accumulation of capital, to put it this way, when you make the transition from the planned economy to, and then these people at some point, they wanted to have more and they wanted to control power. And then they didn't control only power they started to control justice and they literally captured the state and and that's why we have such big issues now reforming justice and reforming our institution other institutions but especially justice because they just captured all the institutions and there were no checks and balances and you know the like one person who had the money initially he would bribe the judges and the prosecutors to have the decisions that he wanted.

40:39Later on, when he had enough power, he didn't even need to bribe them. He was just threatening them. With corruption, your early campaigns were anti-corruption and a better life for people. And I suppose I've spent a lot of my life in Southeast Asia, and there will be some politicians there who say corruption is not a problem. You know, we can run successful economies in Southeast Asia and East Asia, which are quite corrupt, but are still generating enormous growth. Why did you feel dealing with corruption was important for economic growth? It is important for everything. I mean, if you want people to trust the state, if you want them to trust this country, you need to make sure that there is justice, that those who have been stealing, can you imagine that people who have participated in this banking sector fraud.

41:28They are not yet convicted. One of them is convicted, but he's hiding in Russia. And for the others, the trial is happening now. We'll see what happens. I mean, this is about, you pay taxes. You want these taxes to be invested in roads and schools and kindergartens, and not to see the people in power who just take this money and put them in their pocket. Moldova has one million of Moldovans abroad. Some of them left because they didn't have jobs, but some of them left because they were disappointed with the business environment and you can't have a proper business environment if justice doesn't work properly.

42:07Some of them, I mean, felt like what I felt before creating a political party. I don't want to pay taxes in a country where the leadership steals this money. So it's really about the statehood. You need to have, I know it's almost impossible to totally eliminate corruption, but we had this big corruption and this is the main issue on the agenda to punish the big corruption and of course to deal then with systemic corruption, which is also not easy to deal with. We're speaking just a few days after Maduro was seized by American Special Forces and is now on trial in New York. When you were saying earlier that you feel because Moldova is so small and the world's becoming more volatile and more dangerous and maybe being part of Romania would be an option.

42:56Did what happened at the weekend add to those concerns for you that we're returning to a kind of might is right, the big powers should be allowed to do what they want and the little powers don't really count? Well, Maduro was not a legitimate president. And this just reminds me that when we were fighting our oligarch back in 2015, 16, 17, and we spent lots of time in the streets protesting, and then people would ask me, doesn't the West see what is happening here? Why the West does not extract the oligarch for us to recover our democracy? So, you know, I had to tell them for some reasons the West cannot do that.

43:41But it was useful when later on the West did sanction this oligarch and the others and many other people who participated in these big corruption schemes. So I can't say that, you know, I actually hope that now Venezuela is going to have the chance to build a democracy and to get rid of a regime. But we have to see. Trump didn't even mention the word democracy. I think it's early to know about that. And I don't want to speak about scenarios. Do you worry about the current American administration stance on Ukraine? I do appreciate that the current administration is trying to find a solution to bring peace.

44:26At the same time, I don't believe that Putin wants peace. And that's why I'm skeptical about the peace plans. I hope I'm wrong, but so far you don't see any signs that Putin is interested in stopping this war. I actually believe that the West should have helped Ukraine more during the first two years of the war, when Russia's economy was not yet totally oriented towards war, when Russia was surprised that it did not conquer Kiev in three days and so on. And now it's going to be much more difficult. But for Russia to want to stop the war, it has to fill it economically. So I do believe that. So the West should put more pressure on.

45:13Yes, that's how I sit. Transnistria, can we talk about that? I mean, how big an issue is Transnistria in the European Union session discussions? And maybe just for listeners to explain very, very quickly. So maybe, Madam President, you can explain much better than me that just a little summary of the Transnistrian situation. Well, I just mentioned it, that when Moldova became independent, Russia found a way to still create a problem for Moldova's independence. And this is when we had the several months war between the left bank of Nistru, Nistru being one of the two main rivers of the country, and the right bank.

45:56actually it was the Russian army which was there for a long time during the Soviet times which was attacking the Moldovans actually the separatism so this region decided that it does not want to be part of the independent Moldova between the Denista and Ukraine it's a little enclave of about a few hundred thousand people with some Russian soldiers in it which is part of Moldova but in many ways acts as though it's not part of Moldova. It hasn't been recognized. The independence of the separatist regime has not been recognized even by Russia. So none of the countries have recognized it. But Moldova's constitutional authorities have not been able to control the territory since 1982.

46:44Are you able to visit in Quebec? I visited when I was not in politics, when I didn't have a public position, but otherwise no. Now, of course, since the war, and so it's not an active conflict. We have peace for a long time now, but the Russians are keeping their army there. This is an illegal presence of the Russian army. And of course, this is the main impediment to solving the problem. Since the war has started, of course, the war in Ukraine, we have focused on keeping the situation stable because we didn't want Moldova to be dragged into, we don't want Moldova to be dragged into the war. And we do see changes there because today the economic situation in the region is much worse than in the rest of the country.

47:34And that wasn't the case before? That was not the case before because Russia always tried to show that the situation in the region controlled by Russia was better than in the rest of the country. So like they would get energy for free, almost for free, very symbolic prices, Russia paid pensions to them and stuff like that. Now the financial situation is much more difficult. They still consume Russian gas, but they get much less and the tariffs are going up. Russia is not willing anymore to give them gas for free. Many people, tens of thousands of people are coming to work on the right bank of Nistro, which is controlled by the Kostysho authorities.

48:18We even see a change in the economic structure for the exports. Now, 80 % of the exports from the Transnistrian region go to the EU markets, as compared to 100 % to Russia, like 10 years ago. The same with the diaspora, like the people who go to work abroad. Before, it was only Russia. Now, half of these people from the region go to the EU. On the European point, if you join the European Union in the current state, Part of your country, in the eyes of the deal you would do, would have Russian troops, Russian boots on the ground. Of course, our interest is to become part of the EU as a whole country and to reintegrate the country before the EU integration.

49:06But we also know that Russia does not want Moldova to become a EU member state and Russia is going to do everything. And they've been trying to influence the elections, but they failed. They still have the Russian army and they don't want to destroy the Russian army. So the big issue now is how do we get rid peacefully of the Russian army so that we could do the reintegration before the EU. And what's the answer to that? How do you get rid of them? We are looking for solutions. We are talking to our partners. But we do hope that EU is not going to give Putin the veto power on Moldova's EU integration process.

49:45I know the commission is working very constructively and is making very positive noises about Moldova joining the EU. but there will be publics and politicians in Europe when the day comes who may be quite skeptical so what would you say to a I don't know a voter in Germany or a voter in Portugal who says come on we have enough problems already in the EU we spend enough money on other countries this thing is complicated enough already we don't want another country coming in what would what would you say to them? Well, I don't believe Moldova is spending money because Moldova is small and the economic integration of our country is really not a problem for EU.

50:30I mean, our economy is already almost fully integrated. We have one million citizens of EU because they're citizens of Romania and they're citizens of EU. They're already working in Europe and they are highly appreciated by all the the leaders of the EU countries. So it's not about that. On the other side, if Moldova does not get the chance to become a member state, it is going to get into Russian hands at some point, because it's difficult for a small country. Yes, we've been very courageous, we've been very brave, and we've been resisting all this interference, knowing that we're not alone, that EU is there as our ally, as our friend, and one day we will become part of this big family.

51:14If EU says no, then it's going to be easier for Russia to get here. And then again, Russia will use Moldova against the way to Europe. How do we get the optimism and energy back into the EU? Because I think if you are Montenegro, you're pretty frustrated. If you're Albania, you're pretty frustrated. I mean, there are many candidate states who've been waiting to join the European Union and the sense they're getting is that European publics, European politicians have lost their ambition. Well, I think the recent developments, international developments and developments on the continent show that EU needs to become bigger and stronger because this is, again, in everybody's interest.

51:55And yes, I do understand those who have been waiting for a long time because for a while there has no i mean the discussion on extension on enlargement has been kind of you know very low on the agenda now it's high on the agenda i'm not saying that it's easy to keep it high but i do believe that we just need all to understand the threats and then to also understand that our strength is in unity and that eu is not formed of only big countries eu is actually formed of middle level i mean and smaller countries but in this new world which is going to be very different than what we have experienced in the last three decades we we need to we need unity and and we need to work together now you've been very generous with your time we've talked a lot about putin and about trump and about brexit and all sorts of things my final question we flew from Luton in London Luton Airport yesterday so you now have these direct flights sell Moldova to a Brit as a tourist destination well first of all we have the best wines and they are also very cheap better than France yeah I would say some of them are better than in France and and they are much cheaper than in France and we have these nice wineries and you can see like 10 of them in just two days because they're very close to each other.

53:21We have very good food. We have the biggest wine cellars. You just come and then you can get lost in some of these. Where Putin once had a birthday party? Well, that was during a different year, but now his name is not there anymore. It is a really nice country. It's a cheap ticket. And in three, four days, you can see a lot of this country. You that are not just there to be exposed, that we live by our traditions. So please do come to Moldova. You're not going to regret it. It's a nice country. Final one from me. What surprised you most about becoming a politician? If you were giving advice to a young person becoming a politician, what is one unexpected, surprising, unusual thing that they would need to remember about politics?

54:09You have to be very strong. You should not expect that you're going to have a law on hate speech and then everything's going to be nice. You can have Moldova has a law against the hate speech, but it doesn't really work. you have to know that it's going to be very tough but no matter how tough it is you have to pursue your goal because we want to live in a free world in a free country we want to live in dignity and those who are fighting the young and the decent people in politics they just want you to give up to say it's too much it's it's attacking my family it's saying all these stupid things about me which is which is not true I was actually shocked when I became a minister because again I didn't believe that a minister had to be a political opposition I was not a member of a political party and I just said I'm a technocrat I'm going to go there to implement some reforms.

55:17So for me, the most difficult time was the first few years as a minister of education when I was just shocked that people were saying nonsense about me. And, and, you know, they didn't have, I believe they didn't have any reason to do to say that. And, but then I've learned it, that it's going to be tough. But as long as you believe, and as long as you have the trust of people, and to have the trust of people, you have to talk to the people. Moldova is a small country. I've been visiting lots of villages and towns and cities. It's easier. But you also need, it's important, because this is one issue, again, about the mainstream political parties in Europe.

55:57I think the messages have to be the meta messages, also not some narrow messages for different stakeholders. I mean, you know, I don't want to be, you know, bad, But you can't just speak about the rights of LGBT. You have to speak also to the people who are scared of the rights of LGBT. This is what I had to deal with in Moldova because it's a country where conservatism is still there. So you have to speak to everyone and to explain, yes, what the rights mean and to fight the propaganda because Russia is using this and it's using the war as a theme of propaganda. And you have to tackle all these issues and not just focus on some very narrow messages.

56:51You need to be very frank with people, even when you have to deliver difficult messages. you have to be there online but you also need to be there offline and you have to be ready that is going to be very very tough well thank you and good luck thank you very much thank you

57:13so rory what do you think of my son do well i like her very much she reminded me that we had met and i had had a very very happy time talking to her when she was between office some years ago We'd been warned when we were coming in for the interview that she has a reputation being quite sort of shy and controlled I thought actually there was quite a twinkle there She was quite warm and more open than I was expecting. I don't know what she thought. Well, I really liked her I think she's incredibly impressive. It won't be clear to viewers She's small. She's small. I wonder if she deliberately dressed in that rather Thatcherite shade of blue Or was it a European shade of blue?

57:51But I just think she's unbelievably impressive because she said at one point this sense that she wants part of her job is to make people not feel scared i think if i was moldovan i'd be quite scared i think that they have then they're right on the front line um okay not literally the front line but when she went through some of the details of the hybrid war that she was subject to particularly when she was running for re-election i think she's right that we that we in western europe don't take it seriously enough. Now, to be fair, she did say, and she was at pains to say and wanted to say, that the UK had been incredibly helpful in dealing with some of the cyber threat and so forth.

58:29But I think to be the president of this tiny country at this really difficult time, she's got real guts. I also think the anti-corruption thing was interesting for me because, like you, I spent a lot of my life traveling around countries with big corruption issues, who set up independent commissions the greatest corruption, so they're going to eliminate corruption. And generally, people are pretty cynical about it. Academics, people who work in this field will say, you know, when a country is really corrupt, there's not much you can do about it. In Afghanistan, for example, the US government literally appointed H.R.

59:01McMaster's to eliminate corruption, spent hundreds of millions of dollars and got almost nowhere. And he would come and say to me, remember one meeting where he said, you know, what do we got to do to eliminate corruption? I basically said, well, you can forget it. I don't understand how you're going to get down to the local levels. But she does seem to have made real progress. And it's sort of quite interesting. It's almost as though if the person at the top genuinely is honest and genuinely cares about it, it's remarkable what she can do. Because you would have thought that corruption is so deep in every part of the state that it's impossible to deal with it.

59:34By the way, and vice versa. So, for example, I think one of the problems that America has at the moment is there is a general sense that Trump is, by American political standards, deeply corrupt. And that's really bad for America. I think the other thing about President Sanders, she really does lead by example. So I don't know if you're aware of this. I was talking to some of her team. Because they wanted to give us enough time, they've delayed a trip that she was making by a bit. And as a result, she's having to take three flights to get to Cyprus because she doesn't think that leaders should be flown around in private jets and military planes and all the rest of it.

1:00:13So she lives kind of anti-corruption. She breathes anti-corruption. This amazing picture, which the Telegraph led with, which was her boarding the KLM flight in the Netherlands. And there's an entire Dutch honor guard lined up with a red carpet. And it runs to attention as the head of state. And she's carrying her bags on to economy class. Exactly. She's got to turn right with her little backpack back to the Congress. No, I thought she was very impressive. I mean, you're right. The people said to her, people who know her, people who work with her, said, you know, she can be very reserved and very shy.

1:00:43I found her really impressive. She's got amazing eye contact, which I think is incredibly important in politics. I think I've said that to you before. She just really looks you in the eye. And I thought her analysis of, I think most of our listeners say in the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, these sort of places where we have a lot of listeners. I think they need to know a little bit more about what it's like living with this constant, constant bombardment of misinformation, disinformation, funded corruption, funded vote buying and the rest of it. I think the final thing for me is what a different job it is being a politician here.

1:01:20You go into politics in Britain, you're worried about, you know, is GDP going to grow by half a percent or one percent or one and a half percent? She's come into a country where the GDP dropped by between 65 and 70 percent after it left. You know, not by five, six percent after it left the Soviet Union, where it dropped by another six percent with the Ukraine war in 2022, where basically all the energy was switched off for the country, where the Russians are spending a hundred times as much as they're trying to defeat elections, where corruption was so widespread. So in a way, I think one of the things that maybe keeps her going when people say, you know, how can you put up with politics and all the crap is the stakes are so huge.

1:02:02I mean, she's quite literally changing a whole country. You know, some of my friends who are still back in the NGP's are like, well, you know, what am I doing? Maybe I can do something on potholes. Maybe I can build a lift at the local station. She has got war, corruption, economic collapse in a country where she can almost meet everybody. But her last answer to you about what it's like being a politician, she talked about how tough it was. But she also said, you know, she does have the chance to do that, to remake a country. To final point for me, a couple of things. First of all, it was very interesting that she accepted the notion that perhaps the Russians did get very heavily involved in the Brexit referendum.

1:02:40The other thing I would say about her, one, I was very, very happy that she told the truth, that most sensible, reasonable people assume that Russia got very, very involved in our referendum. but I also think her ability to be here, be calm, be serious, and she didn't want to criticize Trump because right now no European leader wants to. But at the same time, you've got a sense that in the way that she conducts her leadership, the way that she conducts her politics, I suspect a lot of Moldovans who look at her and think, she is not like Trump. She is not like Putin. She is straight. Let me finish with a final question for you.

1:03:25I mean, in a way, Kiyosama was hoping that he would be able to be that kind of leader. The story that you got from the biography written about him going into the election is he wasn't showy. He wasn't a guy about big ideas, but he was straight, quiet introverted hard-working public servant technocrat integrity that's worked magnificently well for her why doesn't the same thing work in britain it was interesting wasn't it she really liked kirsten i mean both on and off camera she was sort of saying that you know he personally and the uk since he took over has been incredibly helpful and she actually said at one point you know i don't think britain realizes how lucky you are to have him and as you say most british people aren't thinking that right now i think partly it's the nature of the politics and of the media there's not much media here she gets a lot of grief on social media but she doesn't get bombarded and battered i think the way that maybe a keir starmer or macron does i think she gets bombarded and battered on social media bombarded and battered social media but she's managed to educate the public that a lot of this is coming from russia and from from adversaries and i think the other thing is i think it goes back to your point about the stakes look as you said i actually think we are britain is in a really really challenging position and we do need serious leadership but i still think most britains think they can kind of get on with their lives and politics kind of happens over there i think here i'm look we've barely but we've been here a couple of days that's it but i suspect most people here understand fully that point you just made about the stakes are incredibly high i'll tell you the the other thing i thought was fascinating everybody told us pretty much everybody told us she won't want to address the romanian unification issue she went straight in there she went straight in there and said well i would i would which is so remarkable isn't it because you again you would have thought simply from positions of vanity or ego if you were the head of an independent state yeah you'd you'd never want to vote in a referendum to merge with the neighbor and she was saying she she she accepts as a democrat that there is not a majority for it so she's not as it were pushing it as an active government policy but that was her position.

1:05:31And I think that just, again, is very different to the way that most European leaders speak. If there's a problem like that, you kind of find ways to dance around it. She danced around it by saying what she thinks, and then saying that for political reasons, I'm not doing that for now. Well, Alison, great, great to have her. And I think you're fully vindicated in selecting her as your politician of the year. I did indeed. I didn't tell her that. Okay. See you soon. See you very soon.

1:06:01Hi, it's Rory Stewart here. I've just recorded a very exciting series on artificial intelligence. This is the single most important opportunity challenge in our lifetimes. I'm afraid it's bigger, more transformative than climate change, the Trump administration, what Russia is doing in Ukraine. You might be underselling it. Far from being in a bubble, AI is underhyped. These companies aren't trying to build toys. They're trying to build something that can do everything that a human can do. Whether it's in coding, whether it's in radiology, whether it's legal work, we're already seeing AI models being able to outperform humans in certain domains.

1:06:38And yet the basic debate is, is it going to be able to write my essay for school for me? Most of these companies are relatively new and the people at the top of them are unbelievably personally wealthy. People have made AI videos and it's pretty coherent. It looks good. The problem? These large language models exist only at the moment in China and the US. AI, which is taking over the world. My worry is that we say, let's be cautious, let's not adopt, let's try and preserve things as they are. But our competitors internationally don't do that. We need a solution to stagnation. And it's very possible that AI is our way out of the mess.

1:07:17Or our route into mass unemployment, increased inequality and massive threats to the future of humanity. I suppose the thing that is most urgent is that no one knows. and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. To listen to our full series on AI, sign up at therestispolitics.com.