Moldova - Elections 2021
Moldova has a semi-parliamentary political system. The president can initiate legislation but is mostly tasked with confirming the appointments of high officials and negotiating international treaties. Legislative power is concentrated in parliament and thus wielded by the largest formation there. Overall, the president is the weakest in the hierarchy after the government and the parliament.
Members of the Moldovan Parliament are elected to four-year terms by a universal, direct and secret vote. Elections are conducted from a single national electoral district with 101 elected deputies. Moldova uses a proportional representative system wherein parties, electoral blocs and individual candidates are assigned seats proportionally based on the number of votes received from the country-wide electoral bloc. To earn seats in Parliament, minimum percentage thresholds must be met (5 percent for a party, 7 percent for an electoral bloc and 2 percent for individual candidates, respectively.)6 Since the last parliamentary election, the legal framework has received significant amendments, including reverting to a proportional electoral system, lowering the electoral threshold for parties and blocs and bolstering the 40 percent gender quota with an additional placement requirement on party lists.
Given its sizeable ethnic Russian minority population, Moldova has a complicated relationship with Russia and the European Union (EU). President Maia Sandu was elected in November 2020 on a platform that supported closer ties with the EU. The Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), from which pro-Russia Dodon hails, is the largest group with 37 MPs. It is in a coalition with the centre-left Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) as well as a few independent MPs in order to get the 52 votes needed to control the 101-seat parliament. Sandu's liberal centre-right Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) counts 15 MPs. A coalition with the Republican Socio-Political Movement gives the formation a total of 24 seats.
Maia Sandu won the presidency with 57.75 percent of the vote, while incumbent Igor Dodon gathered 42.25 per cent of ballots. Dodon can only compete for victory in the early parliamentary elections, which will obviously take place in the spring of 2021. In the event of early elections, Sandu and her Action and Solidarity party in coalition with other anti-oligarchic forces are likely to gain a majority and thus take control of the political situation in the country. If the new president does not achieve the dissolution of parliament, then for at least two more years the country will actually be ruled by the socialists of Dodon, together with the deputies controlled by fugitive oligarchs Vladimir Plahotniuc and Ilan Shor, who are now hiding from prosecution in Turkey and Israel.
Sandu's priority was thus to engineer a situation that would trigger early parliamentary elections in the hope of securing a majority to implement her agenda. PAS wants to achieve a “clean, representative parliament and a government that would be a reflection of the new parliament to work together with the president to put forward and implement the reform agenda that the people voted for,” Popsoi told IntelliNews.
The current parliament was elected in 2019, following the adoption of a controversial new electoral code. Dodon’s Socialist Party (PSRM) holds 37 of the 101 seats, making it the largest faction but far short of a majority. The next largest bloc comprises the PAS and its ally the PPDA. Other parties represented in the parliament are the Democratic Party, Pro Moldova, a newly formed political vehicle that splintered off from the Democratic Party, and the Sor Party led by fugitive businessman Ilan Shor.
“The current parliament is totally discredited, it lacks legitimacy and has major issues with representativeness, as it’s a result of the controversial electoral system adopted in very murky circumstances. The 2019 election was far from free and fair, and since then a large number of MPs have switched parties (many of them more than once),” said Popsoi. Many of the defections across party lines were from the Democrats or Socialists to Pro Moldova, headed by former parliament speaker Andrian Candu, the godson of Vlad Plahotnuic, once Moldova’s most powerful politician but a fugitive since mid-2019. In one notorious example, Stefan Gatcan, who resigned from the Socialist Party to join Pro Moldova on June 30, claimed he was physically forced to sign his resignation as an MP by his former colleagues from the PSRM.
Moldova’s pro-Russian prime minister said 23 December 2020 he had resigned to pave the way for an early parliamentary election and “bring normalcy” to the tiny former Soviet state. Prime Minister Ion Chicu, who led a pro-Russian government since November 2019, tendered his resignation a day before the country’s newly elected pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, was due to take office. Since the presidential election, thousands have attended protests demanding the resignation of Chicu’s government.
On April 28, 2021, the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, called for early parliamentary elections to take place on Sunday, July 11, 2021.1 Voting will be held from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at 2,150 polling stations, including 150 abroad and 42 special polling stations on the left bank of the Nistru River in the breakaway Transnistria region.
The July 11 parliamentary elections will provide Moldovans the opportunity to determine the makeup of Parliament nearly 2 1/2 years after the last national legislative elections and eight months after the election of President Maia Sandu, in November 2020. The election represents a referendum of sorts on Sandu’s governing agenda and whether she will have parliamentary support to see it through. Although President Sandu prevailed in the November election on a platform that supported closer ties with Europe, since her election the members of former President Igor Dodon’s Socialist Party have blocked President Sandu’s key political appointments of two prime ministers, which has stunted her ability to advance key reforms and other political objectives.
The decision by Moldova’s Supreme Court to end the State of Emergency that was enacted to stop the spread of COVID-19, and President Sandu’s subsequent move on April 28 to dissolve Parliament, now offered an opportunity for Sandu to consolidate power and advance her agenda more actively. An electoral victory by the Socialist Party faction, however, would cast doubt on the feasibility of Sandu achieving her agenda and again lead to a split government and the prospects for ongoing political gridlock.
The vote arrived on July 11 after an arduous journey that featured an ugly constitutional crisis, street protests, the election of a Europe-leaning president, and ultimately the dissolution in April of the Russia-friendly parliament. More than 20 parties and blocs are running in the election, but only two -- the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) founded by President Maia Sandu, who was elected late last year, and the Russia-friendly Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists (BeCS) -- look certain to enter parliament. A win by PAS, which the latest polls showed leading with about 33 to 37 percent of the vote, could provide Sandu the outright parliamentary majority she needs to push through a reform program intended to put the country firmly on track for European integration.
A win by the BeCS, which is polling at 25 to 37 percent of the vote, and other parties aligned with former pro-Moscow President Igor Dodon would be seen as a return to the status quo that has kept the Eastern European country in Russia's orbit for the past three decades.
With about 800,000 of its 3.5 million citizens living out of the country, the Moldovan diaspora is expected to have a huge impact on the vote in favor of pro-European parties. The organized transportation of voters to polling stations in Transdniester has also drawn attention, with pro-European camps calling for the process to be banned, as it was in the presidential vote. Such "electoral tourism" is seen as a Russia-backed maneuver employed to limit the chances of pro-European parties.
President Maia Sandu’s pro-European party led in Moldova’s elections as vote counting was under way in the snap parliamentary elections she called to shore up her position against pro-Russia forces. With more than 40 percent of the ballots counted, Sandu’s center-right Action and Solidarity (PAS) party secured more than 44 percent of the votes, according to the electoral commission. Ultimately, PAS obtained 52.80 percent of the votes, while the Electoral Bloc of Communists and Socialists, BECS, scored 27.17 percent, and Ilan Shor - 5.74 percent. PAS won a parliamentary majority with 63 of the 101 seats in the legislature as a result of the July 11 elections. PAS had campaigned on a platform of carrying out reforms and tackling corruption. It also advocates closer ties with the European Union and the United States.
Former Moldovan Finance Minister Natalia Gavrilita welcomed her nomination by President Maia Sandu as prime minister-designate after her Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) won snap elections earlier this month. In a Twitter statement posted early on July 31, Gavrilita said she was "honored and humbled" to be nominated by President Sandu, who is also a member of the pro-Western PAS. "It is a great responsibility to fulfill expectations of Moldovan people to improve institutions, ensure rule of law, and build economic prosperity," Gavrilita said.
Moscow was licking its wounds after losing an ally in Chisinau in former president Igor Dodon and his coalition of Communist and Socialist parties in parliament. Transnistria has, traditionally, played an outsized role in elections in Moldova. Moldovan citizens in Transnistria have long been bussed over the River Dniester to vote, with special voting stations organised to cater for them. In previous years, votes from Transnistria were enough to win elections for pro-Russian candidates, including the former president, Igor Dodon, who lost power to Sandu in November 2020. In July, of the 28,173 that voted from Transnistria, 62.21 percent voted for the pro-Russian BECS.
But in the November 2020 presidential and July 2021 parliamentary polls, a surge in support for Sandu and the PAS from the Moldovan diaspora managed to unseat Dodon and his BECS - even with Transnistria. Even Vadim Krasnoselsky, the pro-Moscow leader of the breakaway region of Transnistria, has said that the result on July 11 was "predictable" and has promised to continue the dialogue with Chisinau.
On 10 February 2023, Moldovan President Maia Sandu accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita, speaking highly of her "sacrifice and enormous efforts to lead the country in a time of so many crises." She took over as prime minister in August 2021. Since then, five ministers, including a deputy prime minister, have resigned from her 17-member cabinet. "Despite unprecedented challenges, the country was governed responsibly... We have stability, peace and development," Sandu said.
Over the past year, Moldova had been going through a difficult energy situation, which has forced this country to turn to Romania and Slovakia to acquire the volumes of gas and electricity that it previously obtained from Russia. As a result of the above, the political opposition has been demanding the resignation of Gavrilita, whom they criticized for not having negotiated a better gas agreement with Russia. Her administration "failed to meet the challenges and led Moldova into an energy and economic crisis," said Ilan Shor, a Moldovan politician in exile.
Sandu nominated presidential aide and former interior minister Dorin Recean as the candidate for the position of Prime Minister.
A new pro-Western government led by Prime Minister Dorin Recean was sworn in in Moldova after receiving the backing of 62 lawmakers from the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) in the 101-seat parliament. The vote took place on February 16 less than a week after Recean, 48, was nominated by President Maia Sandu to replace Natalia Gavrilita, whose government resigned following 18 months in office. Deputies representing opposition socialists and communists demonstrated against the new government and chanted "Shame" and "Anticipated." The Russian-friendly Shor Party boycotted the session. The PAS majority in parliament also approved the new government’s program, dubbed Prosperous, Safe, European Moldova, to revive the economy and chart a course toward the European Union.
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