Moldova isn’t rich, even in wine-producing spots like this, and huge numbers have left the country to seek better lives and incomes overseas. That’s created a diaspora so large, its vote has become decisive.<\/p>\n
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the surge in energy prices has strained the economy even further \u2013 to near zero growth.<\/p>\n
“The politicians have fancy paper to print their election posters and flyers, but there’s nothing decent for our kids’ schoolbooks,” one of the mums grumbles, displaying a photo on her phone of school books, tattered and torn.<\/p>\n
Another says her salary on a factory production line is stuck at around \u00a3100 a month but the cost of living has soared. “I don’t know who to vote for, they all make promises,” she shrugs. “Then they do nothing.”<\/p>\n
Beyond PAS, the choice on Sunday includes the Patriotic Bloc made up primarily of the Socialist and Communist parties. A key member, Irina Vlah, was barred from running on Friday because of allegations of illicit financing.<\/p>\n
Another bloc, Alternativa, posits itself as pro-EU but its candidates include the Chisinau mayor who is banned from travel in Europe’s Schengen zone for unspecified security reasons. He’s appealing the ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moldova isn’t rich, even in wine-producing spots like this, and huge numbers have left the country to seek…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-454853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115275194965925800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}