During the elections, the police revealed a large Russian operation to influence the election.
12:01•Updated 12:05
Moldovans will decide today whether the country will take another step closer to the EU and further away from Russia’s sphere of influence.
The country is voting today in the first round of the presidential election. At the same time, a referendum on EU membership will be held. In the run-up to the elections, Moldovan authorities have tried to fend off Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the vote.
In the referendum, Moldovans will be asked whether the constitution should be amended so that joining the EU would be written into the law as a national goal.
– This is a historic decision for us, perhaps the most important since we gained independence from the Soviet Union, says Politico magazine Cristina GherasimovDeputy Prime Minister of Moldova responsible for EU integration.
Gherasimov considers EU membership the only possibility to stabilize Moldova’s democracy.
A pro-EU president with the strong
Moldova applied for EU membership in March 2022 shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, and membership negotiations began last June. In a recent opinion poll by think tank WatchDog, approximately 63 percent of respondents supported Moldova’s EU integration and 32 percent opposed.
WatchDog analyst Valeriu Pashan according to which it is essential how many people participate in the referendum. In order for the result to be valid, the turnout must be at least 33 percent. At the same time, pro-Russian parties have tried to get people to boycott the vote.
A pro-EU president in the presidential elections Maia Sandu is aiming for a second season and is a clear favorite to win. He led WatchDog’s recent support poll with 36 percent of the vote. The next most popular candidate, the pro-Russian Socialist Party Alexander Stoianoglo remained at ten percent.
Sandu probably won’t get more than half of the votes in the first round. In that case, the presidential election will be decided in a second round in two weeks.
Russia buys votes with money
Sandu has repeatedly accused Russia of trying to influence Moldova’s internal politics, and Russia’s tentacles also extend to these elections. Moldovan authorities suspect that up to a quarter of the voters have been tried to be influenced with Russian money.
The Moldovan police revealed a large-scale Russian election influence operation at the beginning of October. The police chief Viorel Cernauteanu 150,000 people are suspected of having received bank transfers from Russia. According to Politico, there are a good one million voters in Moldova.
– If these people have a family member, it makes 300,000. We are talking about more than 25 percent of voters in Moldova, Cernauteanu said at a recent press conference.
During the investigation, approximately 350 raids have been carried out and hundreds of people have been arrested on suspicion of election influence.
According to the police, behind the influence operation was a pro-Russian businessman and former politician To Ilan Șor linked people. Șor was convicted in absentia of fraud last year. He has denied all the charges.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called earlier this week to “categorically” deny the accusations of election influence.
The election has also been tried to be influenced by disinformation pushing Russian narratives, which the Moldovan authorities have tried to combat by closing pro-Russian media platforms.
According to think tank WatchDog, the disinformation repeats, among other things, stories that the EU is unilaterally dictating terms to Moldova and that the referendum would have no effect on the EU membership process.
In terms of Moldova’s EU membership, the pro-Russian region of Transnistria, which declared itself independent in 1990, also raises questions. No country has recognized Transnistria’s independence, and formally it belongs to Moldova. There have been Russian soldiers in the area since the early 1990s.
Anti-corruption female president
Sandu, the first female president of Moldova, has become a symbol of change for many in Moldova.
Sandu worked, among other things, as an economist at the World Bank before he was elected Minister of Education of Moldova in 2012.
In 2016, Sandu founded the Action and Solidarity Party (ASP). He was already running for president at that time, but lost to Russian support For Igor Dodon. In 2019, Sandu became prime minister and the following year, president, when he won Dodon with surprisingly clear numbers.
Sandu based his winning presidential election campaign on anti-corruption and promised to “clean up the country”.
During Sandu’s term, Moldova has, among other things, reformed its judicial and electoral systems and its public administration. However, the president has also been criticized for lobbying the West instead of focusing, for example, on improving the economic situation. With a population of 2.6 million, Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe.
In announcing his new candidacy, Sandu said that the mission of his generation is to “democratically and freely integrate Moldova into the big European family.”