I just learned from an article in the foreign press that the Moon has already been populated. A spacecraft landing on the Moon on a research mission accidentally spilled a container with tardigrades that the spacecraft was transporting. The tardigrades reached the Moon. Nobody can say what will happen next, but scientists are optimistic.

Tardigrades are a kind of tiny, half-millimeter invertebrates that can be found at 6,000 meters in the Himalayas or at the bottom of the oceans; they survive at minus 200 degrees Celsius or 150 degrees plus. It was a good idea to study them in space too, and they will probably survive on the Moon.

I have a feeling that, at present, a species of tardigrades is ruling Moldova from the shadow. Elections take place, governments keep changing, but these tardigrades survive all the hot flashes, cryotherapy and stay put.

For example, let’s take the status of the insects that privatized Chișinău Airport in 2013. So much has changed since then, but they remain masters there.

In 2013, Moldova was one step to signing the Association Agreement with the European Union, agreeing to many commitments on transparency, combating corruption and ensuring the rule of law in the activities of public institutions. Well, that’s also when provisions were made for the privatization of the only functional passenger airport in the country. 

Although Moldova was in the process of discussing the Agreement on common airspace with the E.U., only two companies were declared eligible for the semi-obscure competition, both from the Russian Federation. The Russian Khabarovsk Airport alone was found useful and sufficiently modern, transparent and European to become a legal investor.

As soon as the Khabarovsk investor received the Chișinău Airport stamp for the next 49 years, they immediately introduced a modernization fee of nine euros for each and every Moldovan. 

Are you going abroad for work, to pay back your debts and you have a plane ticket? Give the Airport, besides other taxes, nine euros for modernization. Did your children buy a ticket for you to go to Spain to see your grandchildren? Give the Airport nine euros, whether you have them or not. Are you a student and your ticket was paid by a university abroad? You to give the Airport nine euros. Do you have a seriously ill child and are going to a hospital in Berlin or Istanbul to treat him? Pay the Chișinău Airport an additional nine euros tax for each ticket, your child’s and yours.

Later, in 2015, it was established and clearly stated that the revenues from this modernization tax were higher than the investments. A parliamentary commission was created, but the deputies from the Democratic Party, led by Sergiu Sârbu, polished the image as well as they could. 

Deputy Iurie Țap turned out to be the only one with a separate opinion, in which he pointed out that the taxes are illegal, that the investor took loans to use for investments and that the financial inspection established other irregularities. The tardigrades remained unaffected.

Corruption kept blooming at the airport area and beyond. The duty-free shop was the first institution that was built among the ruins of the new-old airport, and fell into the hands of Ilan Shor and his puppeteer, just like the Airport. 

You travel with a low-cost carrier, you have no money to check your luggage, but you want to bring your friends a bottle of wine? Leave some more money to Shor at the duty-free shop. The carousel of illegal money is endless. No one has stopped it so far. And it will be difficult to do so now. 

These few paragraphs only reference the moles at the Airport, but how many of them are there at Moldtelecom, in Parliament, in courts, in prosecutor’s offices, and in government institutions?

From 2013 to present Moldova could have reached the Moon in terms of progress, transformation, modernization, improvement, and success. But we are worse off than we were then. We are back to the stone age, and now we venture to bring order at the Airport. You cannot take down enemy planes with stones. 

This Government, instead of building, is in fact forced to continue to destroy the creations of the former corrupt governments. It’s a long, difficult process, full of change-resistant tardigrades. They may succeed or they may not. Anyway, it is even more difficult for the people who pay taxes.

• Guernsey-based Company Takes Over Chișinău Airport

Alina RADU, alina.radu@zdg.md