Transcription
On Sunday, Moldova's voted in the country's parliamentary elections, described by many as a choice between the country's continued path towards European Union membership or to instead seek closer ties with Russia. Opinion polls on the run-up to the vote suggested a razor thin race between pro-EU president Maya Sandu's party of action and solidarity and the pro-Russian patriotic electoral block. In the end, however, the vote wasn't even close. In a decisive victory for pro-EU forces, the ruling party retained its majority, winning just over 50% of the vote at the time of writing, while the pro-Russian opposition block took around 24.3%. Reaffirming Moldova's path towards the EU in an election that's been described as the most important in Moldova's post-independence history. So, in this video, we're going to take a look at Moldova's election and what might happen next.
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Never miss an episode and always feel in the loop by subscribing and ringing the bell. Let's start with some context. Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova had a few left-wing successors to the ban Soviet era Communist Party. The party of Communists soon became the dominant force and in 2001 made history as the first and only communist party in the former USSR to win an outright majority in a democratic election. Despite its name, the party was hardly revolutionary. Its social policies were conservative and its foreign policy sought to balance ties between Moscow and the West. But that dominance began to crumble after the Twitter revolution of April 2009 when disputed election results sparked widespread protests.
By 2014, support for the communists had collapsed and disillusioned voters turned to the pro-Russian party of socialists, which that year won about 20% of the vote, pledging to block NATO, cancel Moldova's EU trade deal, and instead join Russia's Eurasian Economic Union, a kind of post-Soviet version of the EU. But despite the socialist victory, two center-right pro-EU parties formed a minority government instead. However, this government quickly became plagued by infighting, corruption scandals, and opportunism amid a worsening economic crisis in the country, which led into widespread protests in 2015 into 2016.
However, the 2021 elections marked a turning point. Former education minister Maya Sandu, co-founder of the PAS, swept to power with 52.8% and 8% of the vote, securing a strong parliamentary majority with 63 seats. PAS dominated nearly the entire country except for three conspicuously pro-Russian regions, Transnistria, Gagauzia, and Moldova's northern districts. With the PAS in charge, Sandu launched reforms to align Moldova with EU standards, earning official EU candidate status in 2022. At the same time, she prioritized judicial reform and efforts to dismantle corruption networks, especially those accused of channeling Russian money into Moldova politics.
Now, while these reforms have boosted Sandu's popularity, and she's consistently been rated as Moldova's most trusted political figure, she struggled to address Moldova's various economic challenges. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Moldova, which had previously relied heavily on Russian energy, moved to phase out Russian gas imports, sending energy prices soaring and stoking inflation, which reached a record high of 34.6% in October 2022. And although inflation has eased since then, it rose again at the start of this year following the expiration of a Ukraine-Russian gas transit deal, which directly impacted Moldova and remains high at around 7.3%. Meanwhile, over 30% of the population is living below the poverty line from 24.5% before the war and economic growth has stalled with GDP growing by just 0.1% in 2024.
While Sandu has maintained that Moldova's efforts at European integration will eventually bear fruit if voters stick with it. Moldovan society remains deeply divided on whether the country should join the EU. In fact, recently things have looked increasingly shaky for Sandu and her vision for Romania in Europe with her only narrowly winning both a referendum on EU membership as well as her own reelection as president. And while recent polling shows that a 47.4% plurality of Moldovans now support EU membership, 28% still favor joining Russia's Eurasian Economic Union with about 18% remaining undecided.
Anyway, in the run-up to the vote, Moldova's main court suspended a handful of pro-Russia parties, ruling that they were unconstitutional, while polls showed Sandu's PAS holding a slim lead, capturing around 30% of the vote. Trailing in second place was the Patriotic Electoral Block composed of the Communist and Socialist Parties along with two newer pro-Russian groups, the Heart of Moldova Party and the Future of Moldova Party, who campaigned on promises to defend Moldova's sovereignty and resist Western influence. While PAS maintained a roughly 17% lead over the pro-Russian block, the race remained uncertain due to a high number of undecided voters, which has steadily grown over the past few years, even roughly matching the PAS's share. Likely driven by economic stagnation, these voters have become highly vulnerable to Russian interference and disinformation campaigns, which have intensified in recent months and especially in the leadup to the election.
On the day of the vote, tensions continued to run high. An electoral monitoring agency reported 250 incidents at polling stations across the country while hoax bomb threats were reported not only at stations in Moldova but also in other European capitals such as Brussels and Rome. However, at the end of the day, PAS ultimately emerged victorious with 99.7% of the vote counted. PAS gained 50.14% of the vote and due to secure 55 of the 101 parliamentary seats, giving the party a comfortable majority. Meanwhile, the pro-Russian patriotic block came in second, winning 24.2% of the vote and gaining 26 seats, a clear setback for pro-Russian forces who have already called for protest starting Monday, accusing the PAS of stealing the election. Then the remaining seats were split among other smaller parties, many of whom have ties to the pro-Russian parties with the new center-left alternative block winning eight seats, the populist Our Party securing six, and Democracy at Home also gaining six.
As I mentioned, for their part, the pro-Russian block has promised protest in the capital and claimed that the election was rigged against them, as well as those parties we mentioned earlier. Just 2 days before the election, the pro-Russian Heart of Moldova Party, formerly part of the Patriotic Block and Greater Moldova Party, were also banned from the election over illegal financing, voter bribery, and undeclared foreign fund allegations. Opposition politicians in the separatist pro-Russian region of Transnistria also accused the government of numerous and blatant attempts to limit the vote of Transnistrian people by moving polling stations outside of Transnistria.
Nonetheless, the margin of PAS's victory is a pretty decisive win for Moldova's pro-EU ambitions, injecting fresh momentum into a path that had recently begun to look shaky. However, the road to EU membership is still a long way away from Moldova. Moldova's Sandu hopes the country will be able to get membership by 2030. Moldova has yet to open up any chapter negotiations and still has a lot to do on combating corruption and cleaning up the country's judiciary. Nevertheless, with PAS retaining its majority, the ability for pro-Russian parties to derail Moldova's European course now looks severely limited.
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