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Recommendations for a New Democratic Control, Oversight and Accountability Model of the National Security System in the Republic of Moldova
4 Feb 2010
Valeriu Mija, PRISA Executive Director
The public disorder events on the 7th of April 2009 in the Republic of Moldova, along with imperfection of the legal basis of the national security sector and imprecision of juridical mechanisms that should support its functionality, also demonstrated deep Moldovan population distrust toward police, public order agencies and security services.
If such attitude of the civil society persists to exist for a long time and starts manifesting toward other national security sector’s institutions, such as the National Army, the Border Guards, Customs Service, the internal security situation might become profoundly-deteriorated due to lasting domestic political instability and to the national security dilemma – Transdniestrian conflict-resolution process.
The analysis and lesson learned of the 7th of April 2009 events, especially national leadership response toward that violence, revealed the existence of unclear accountability within the chain of command of the national security institutions, which policed that protest, as well as weakness of democratic control and oversight over the national security sector. Furthermore, the current defense-security system disclosed inability to quickly find efficient solutions in crisis management situations and incapacity to implement effective security policies, since most of them have been outdated for a long time. Such actions in the future (if repeated) can eventually lead toward the loss of the national government legitimacy in the eyes of population and consequent state collapse.
Therefore, in the long term, the leadership of the Republic of Moldova should as soon as possible start reorganizing democratic control and oversight over the defense-security forces by several reforms: daily control and oversight over the national security sector, national operational control of this sector in crisis management situations, stipulations of clear functional tasks for the national security institutions, and launch a new national educational process among civil society and political parties in regard to the national security sector.
First, it is important that the Moldovan Government restore the trust in the state authority by not admitting such uncoordinated actions (April 07, 2009) in the future. Therefore, the reform of the National Security Council (NSC) under the President – Commander-in-Chief (CINC/see the annex) is recommended to be one of the first priority elements. Certainly, the NSC is characteristically a political organ having advisory board: Prime Minister and Council of Ministers' key figures, responsible for national security institutions. Meanwhile, to increase effectiveness of the national security sector, this model recommends that the NSC should become a tool not only for political consulting in development of national security and defense policies but also a tool for crisis management situations as well as coordination of the national security sector. This proposal and recent lessons learned recommend that in emergency and crisis situations all combat elements of the national security sector be subordinated to the CINC through the NSC, which will politically recommend the decisions for the Presidential approval.
The critical transition element of this recommendation is that the President remains CINC with approval right of the national security institutions’ emergency and crisis situations’ actions. The implication consists in past experience and partially-proved assumptions that militaries, police and security representatives in transition societies, like the Republic of Moldova case, have skeptical attitude toward new parliamentarian democracies; and, the only element they continue fully and unquestionably obeying is the Supreme Commander– the President - state symbol. In the future, providing that Moldova’s political and civil societies become consolidated, the perspective of this proposal recommends, especially for parliamentarian democracies, that the Prime-Minister will be the CINC and the President a member of the NSC with a powerful vote (example: 1 vote for 3 votes). Thus, the NSC will play political accountability and control role in critical emergency and crisis situations, excluding executive dualism.
Second, at the moment the Republic of Moldova becomes fully consolidated as a classical parliamentarian democracy, a daily democratic and operational control of the national security sector (annex) is recommended to be managed exclusively by the Government that has a political trust vote from the Parliament, while an oversight by the Supreme Justice Court (General Prosecutor Office) and the Parliament; latter interacts with political parties, free mass media and civil society – key elements of a parliamentarian democracy. In that model it is crucial that ministries' appointees be political parties’ qualified civilians. In the proposed scheme, the subordination by decentralization of the defense/security institutions to the different ministries reduces military/security autonomies and increases civilian democratic control, while subordination of the Land Forces and the Air Forces under the Joint Staff to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) increases effectiveness, which already exists in the Moldovan MoD due to recently internationally-assisted reforms. Meanwhile, it is important that the Parliament has the oversight function for allocations and appropriations of budgets of national security institutions and their correlations with stipulated activities/programs. Thus, the classical democratic control and oversight of a national security system presumes that President, NSC, Government develop and approve national security polices; meantime, national security and defense ministries controls implementation of their activities and appropriated budgets while Parliament oversights this process.
After Moldovan political and civil societies’ consolidation, evidently, the Parliament will become stronger; therefore, to balance the Parliament in such scenario in order not to diminish effectiveness of the national security institutions, the model also implies the judicial oversight from the Supreme Justice Court nominated by the national representation act. Thus, the scheme consists of political ministerial (executive) control and parliamentarian-judicial (legislative/legal) balanced oversight over the military/security forces. The proposed model makes the operational control easier, provide clear political accountability of political appointees, and, meantime, increase the effectiveness of the national security sector in crisis management situations.
Additionally, the President with the NSC and the Government’s ability to timely define clear missions and tasks for the defense and security structures will play key role in civil-military relations. The national security model in a democratic state presumes that a Ministry of Defense exclusively focuses on external defense, but an Interior Ministry and other security structures on internal security and emergency situations. The balanced government-parliament capacity to dominate national security institutions’ leadership selection and approval, to pro-actively develop national security policies, to primarily reform the Ministry of Internal Affairs (principally to make central apparatus of the MIA be composed of civilian civil servants), to have share control over the external defense (due to political MoD and military Joint Staff) will restore and strengthen the Moldovan population trust and credibility for the national security sector.
Finally, to achieve effective results in proposed system, the national measures are recommended in the Republic of Moldova: the Parliamentarian defense/security committee's members shall be qualified and have sufficient knowledge and experience for function execution; politicians are to have a special training about the international/national security; a public debate about the army, police and other security institutions is to be generated to improve the political culture of the Moldovan civil society; most importantly to create a new approach in national security education process to prepare new military/police personnel as well as civilian appointees (politicians and professional civil servants) in national security institutions.
In summary, it is recommended that the Moldovan Government take pro-actively advantage of the EU Eastern Partnership Policy and revitalization of the Individual Partnership Action Plan NATO-RM to firstly implement reform regarding precise democratic control and oversight over the national security sector, which will allow to objectively stipulate clear responsibilities, functions and tasks in ordinary, emergency and crisis situations. Primarily, the NSC must become national coordinating-consultative tool advising political decisions and coordinating the national security sector. Second, exact division of the functions between defense/security structures on external defense and internal security will increase the institutional effectiveness, while continuation of subordinating them to different governmental ministries will only strengthen a democratic civilian control. Significant element for the entire security sector reform will be the ability of democratically-elected civilian politicians to dominate political decision making while leaving militaries, police and intelligence personnel for the professional advises and actions (or inactions without repercussions) in accordance with the national legislation.
The proposed system will effectively start working after the educational process of the civil society and the national security community gives first results - a new generation of the professional militaries/policemen and political elite with profound security and defense knowledge.
Annex:
©Valeriu Mija / PRISA Foundation, February 2010