Results of the Moldovan parliamentary elections
Post-election uncertainty persists in the neighboring Republic of Moldova
Bogdan Matei, 04.03.2019, 12:48
Moldovas Central Election Committee has approved the final results of the February 24 parliamentary elections and has announced the number of seats that parties will have in Chisinaus new Parliament.
President Igor Dodons pro-Russian Socialists have secured 35 of the total 101 MP seats. The senior partner in the self-professed pro-Western government, the leftist Democratic Party, led by the controversial oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, has got 30 seats, and the ACUM bloc, an electoral cartel of the pro-European right wing got some 26 seats. Seven seats went to the populist party led by the pro-Russian mayor of the town of Orhei, in the centre, Ilan Şor, who was sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison in a billion-dollar bank fraud case.
Three independent candidates will also become MPs. The former single party in the Soviet era, the communist party, will no longer be represented in parliament for the first time, and nor will the parties that explicitly lobby for joining Romania, namely the Christian Democrats and then the Liberals.
Without a clear winner, the election outcome allows for a number of political scenarios. The pro-European opposition has already turned down the Democratic Partys proposal to form an alliance that should carry out reforms, get closer to the EU and fight against corruption.
The leaders of ACUM, Maia Sandu and Andrei Nastase, who have denounced unprecedented vote rigging, and said, during the election campaign, that their lives were threatened, are now saying they will not form a coalition with a party seen as deeply corrupt. An alliance between Socialists and Democrats would have secured a comfortable majority of two-thirds of Parliament. The two parties, however, seem incompatible in both political and geopolitical terms, as the Democrats are still using a Pro-European rhetoric while the Socialists follow the Russian one.
The countrys president, Igor Dodon, has warned that unless parties make up a government coalition he would call for early elections. Unanimously considered the strongman of the Moldovan political arena, Plahotniuc has expressed readiness to negotiate with anyone and to disregard any ideological differences. Pundits tend to believe he will once again manage to form a majority, rallying around his Democratic Party, if not parties, at least MPs always willing to abandon the logo under which they have been elected.
The most consistent and staunchest supporter of Moldovas sovereignty, territorial integrity and modernisation, Romania says it is very important for the post-election stages to unfold in a responsible and democratic manner, with the observance of the democratic principles needed for the countrys stability and for the preservation of a European perspective. Because this, Bucharest has also said, is the only perspective able to meet the Moldovan citizens legitimate expectations of prosperity.
(translated by: Elena Enache)
