Pro-European majority in the Moldovan Parliament

The citizens of the ex-Soviet Republic of Moldova, with a majority Romanian speaking population, have chosen Europe following Sundays parliamentary elections.

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Bogdan Matei, 12.07.2021, 14:00

The pro-Western presidential Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) has won the early parliamentary elections held on Sunday in the Republic of Moldova. After the counting of votes from almost all polling stations, the Party of Action and Solidarity PAS, founded by the Moldovan President, Maia Sandu, obtained more than half of the votes. The Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists (BECS), headed by former pro-Russian heads of state, communist Vladimir Voronin and socialist Igor Dodon, comes second, with about a quarter of the votes cast.

A new entry in the Moldovan Parliament is the populist party of the fugitive oligarch Ilan Șor, the protagonist of several big corruption cases, who already received a 6-year prison sentence from a court of first instance. None of the other around 20 lists of candidates has crossed the electoral threshold. The two parties that are openly promoting Moldova’s reunification with Romania, the Party of National Unity (PUN) and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), a franchise of the nationalist party of the same name, in opposition, in the Romanian Parliament, have obtained very low scores, below 1%.

Analysts say that, according to a latest poll, the rate of unionists in Moldova is still over 40%, but they have also voted for the presidential party. President Maia Sandu announced on April 28 that she had signed the decree for the dissolution of Parliament, dominated by the pro-Russian left and unable to appoint a government, and had called for snap legislative elections to be held on July 11.

According to commentators, President Maia Sandu wanted to go through all the constitutional procedures in order to be able to more rapidly dissolve the former parliament, considered the most corrupt parliament in the independent Republic of Moldova’s 30-year history. Elected president in the autumn of 2020 with a pro-European Union program, Maia Sandu has repeatedly accused the former MPs of wanting to sabotage her authority and has called for early legislative elections, for Parliament to be able to help her in the fight against corruption and the coronavirus pandemic.

After the unprecedented score obtained in the elections by her party, a self styled right-wing party, a partner of the National Liberal Party – PNL (in the government coalition in Romania) and of the European People’s Party, the Moldovan President Maia Sandu will finally have all the levers of power. She has excellent relations with the Romanian authorities from which the Republic of Moldova has received half a million anti-COVID-19 vaccines in addition to medical equipment, and she also has open doors in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. Still, Maia Sandu remains the president of one of the poorest states in Europe, riddled with corruption and undermined by the pro-Russian separatism in Transdniester (east), therefore Sundays victory is a big challenge for her, and her term in office is going to be difficult. (LS)