Pro-EU party in Moldova set to win vote mired in claims of Russian interference

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1. The pro-European party of Moldovan President Maia Sandu is heading for a clear victory and a new majority in parliament in elections seen as critical for her country’s future path to the EU.
   Sandu had warned of “massive Russian interference” after voting, saying the future of her country, flanked by Ukraine and Romania, was at stake.

   Her Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) secured 50% of the vote, with most of the 1.6m votes counted, far ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc on under 25%. Turnout was 52%, higher than in recent years.

   One of the main opposition leaders, Igor Dodon, had claimed victory even before results came in and called for protests outside parliament on Monday.

   Recent Moldovan votes have been far closer, but it eventually became clear that Sandu’s party was on course for another majority in the 101-seat parliament.

   Four years ago, the president’s party won 52.8% of the vote, and based on latest results it is now set to clinch 55 seats.

   To form a government it will not need to rely on support from other parties, such as the Alternativa bloc or the populist Our Party.

   In a measure of the tension surrounding the vote, bomb scares were reported at polling stations in Italy, Romania, Spain and the US.
   Similar scares were reported in Moldova itself and three people were arrested on suspicion of plotting unrest the day after the vote. The head of Sandu’s party, Igor Grosu, blamed criminal groups backed by Moscow for Sunday’s incidents and appealed for “patience and calm” to let the electoral process continue.

   Moldova also has a pro-Russian breakaway enclave called Transnistria along its border with Ukraine, complete with a Russian military presence.

   Residents in this sliver of land have Moldovan passports. Many are strongly pro-Moscow and Socialist party leader Igor Dodon said there had been “all sorts of harassment, stopping them from voting”.

   Moldovans have been buffeted by Russia’s full-scale war in neighbouring Ukraine, but they are also grappling with spiralling prices and high levels of corruption.

   President Sandu, 53, who won a second term of office last November, warned Moldovans the future of their democracy was in their hands: “Don’t play with your vote or you’ll lose everything!”

   Dodon, who is one of Sandu’s main rivals, went on national TV as soon as polls closed to claim his pro-Russian allies in the Patriotic Electoral Bloc had won the election, despite there being no exit polls and before any early results were declared.

   Thanking Moldovans for voting “in record numbers”, Dodon called on the PAS government to leave power, and for supporters of all opposition parties to take to the streets on Monday to “defend” their vote outside parliament at midday.

   “We will not allow destabilisation,” he promised. “The citizens have voted. Their vote must be respected even if you don’t like it,” he added, addressing President Sandu and her party.

   One of the parties in Dodon’s bloc was barred from running two days before the vote because of alleged illicit funding.

   In the run-up to the vote, police reported evidence of an unprecedented effort by Russia to spread disinformation and buy votes. Dozens of men were also arrested, accused of travelling to Serbia for firearms training and co-ordinating unrest. A BBC investigation uncovered a network promising to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news.

   Parties sympathetic to Moscow rejected the police claims as fake and a show – created by the government to scare people into supporting them. Russia’s embassy in the UK rejected the BBC’s allegations, accusing Moldova and its “Western sponsors” of seeking to divert attention from Chisinau’s “internal woes”.

   Inside all the polling stations visited by the BBC a small camera had been placed on a tripod overlooking the transparent ballot boxes.
   Election monitors said they were recording everything, to be checked if there were any reports of violations.

   Dan Spatar, who was at one polling station in the capital with his young daughter said he was choosing a European future over a Russian past: “We voted for this four years ago and deserve to continue with it. We see what happens every day in Ukraine and we worry about that.”

   Moldova was awarded EU candidate status in 2022 along with Ukraine, four months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

   Marina said she was voting “for peace in Moldova, for a better life, for growing our economy” and felt it would be very hard for her country to continue its path to Europe with a pro-Russian government.

   At the edge of Moldova’s separatist enclave of Transnistria on Sunday, a long queue of cars waited to drive to 12 polling stations opened beyond the administrative border, some of them more than 20km (12 miles) away.

   People had to travel a long way from home and the number of voters was down on recent years at just over 12,000, an indication of the struggle many faced.

   Moldovan police checked documents and car boots before letting them pass. Most cars had several people inside, often whole families.
   By mid-afternoon, the queue stretched into the distance beyond a kiosk with a Soviet-style hammer-and-sickle emblem on top, and the green-and-red striped flag of Transnistria.
   Speaking to drivers, most seemed unconcerned by the inconvenience, and the atmosphere was relatively relaxed.

   One man told the BBC in Russian that he was voting for change because the PAS government had “promised paradise and delivered nothing”. No-one would be more specific than that, insisting their voting preference was “secret”.
   Close to a giant statue of Lenin in the town of Anenii Noi, south-east of the Moldovan capital, a group of voters from Transnistria complained they had been sent first to one town and then another, because a bomb scare had closed the polling station. They believed it had been done deliberately to put them off voting.

   One man said he ran a “Russian business” in the separatist enclave and was clear he wanted the pro-Russians back in power.

2. There was obviously a lot more interference in favor of the ruling party considering they banned many of the opposition parties and closed off many of the polling stations in the areas the opposition parties polled well in. Ultimately, Europe thinks the hybrid war with Russia is too risky to maintain the “fair” part of “free and fair” elections and so is making this choice. That is totally their right but I really hope they end the lectures to the rest of the world’s democracies.

   For example, India despite all the security threats from China and Pakistan has never annulled or threatened to annul its results because the ruling party didn’t like the outcome. Many other democracies have also not done that despite being rated low on “Freedom House”. It’s such a farce that Europe when facing a security threat for the first time post-Cold War immediately rigs results for the ruling parties and then lectures other non-West democracies for being “electoral autocracies”.

3. I have a feeling, that “Russian interference” at this point became biggest advertising point for PAS. I feel, like any party in Eastern Europe can run on a pretense of them opposing Russian influence, and effectively silencing and painting any kind of criticism as Russian shill.

   which is not that surprising, but still is a really shitty thing. European Union resembles late USSR a lot, it feels like a light version of cold war, where politicians just use this convenient “foreign influence” notion to dismiss parties that they don’t like. And the most ironic part of all of this, is that those pro-EU parties are no better then Russia in the eyes of folks, who see those opposition crackdowns with their own eyes.

4. >Pro-EU party in Moldova set to win vote mired in claims of Russian interference

   Moldova bans pro-Russian political parties… oh look at all that *Russian* interference! It’s weird watching the decline of democracy across Europe – feels a lot like when the US lost our privacy after 9/11, due to being scared of terrorism.

   You guys are losing your freedom because your politicians are scared of looking stupid and being thrown out of office for the way they botched relations with Russia and shot the western economies in the foot.

5. What did Mandu do in the 2024 elections? She sent only 10,000 ballots to Moscow for the nearly half a million people living in Russia. Even if someone wanted to vote, there were no more ballots.

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