Moldova - Politics 2024
The 2024 presidential election in Moldova is scheduled for October 20, 2024, and will be held in conjunction with a referendum on the country's potential membership in the European Union. This election is highly significant as it will determine Moldova's political trajectory amidst ongoing challenges, including substantial Russian interference and internal political strife. President Maia Sandu, who is running for re-election, is a strong advocate for EU integration. Her administration has faced persistent efforts by Russia to undermine Moldova's democratic institutions and support for pro-European policies. These efforts include spreading disinformation, supporting opposition candidates, and inciting protests against the current government.
The referendum on EU membership, which will be held alongside the presidential election, aims to solidify Moldova's commitment to joining the European Union. This move has broad support among pro-European citizens, although there are significant pro-Russian sentiments within the country, particularly in regions like Gagauzia. The election and referendum are seen as pivotal moments for Moldova, as they will not only decide the leadership but also the future direction of the country's foreign policy and its alignment with either European or Russian spheres of influence.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by authorities; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious government corruption; extensive gender-based violence, including domestic and intimate partner violence and sexual violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting Roma; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting persons with disabilities.
National elections were widely reported to be free and fair, with observers noting some irregularities in presidential election in 2020 and parliamentary elections in 2021. ODIHR’s preliminary report following the November 2023. local elections concluded that the elections “were peaceful and managed efficiently, but interference from abroad and restrictive measures, imposed due to national security concerns on freedom of speech, association, and the right to compete, had a negative impact on the process.” ODIHR also stated that the suspension of broadcast licenses for certain media outlets appeared “to be a disproportionate restriction of freedom of expression.” The report commented that the Central Electoral Commission worked professionally and in an open manner, and “generally enjoyed the confidence of stakeholders, with the exception of the opposition,” but the fact that a majority of its members were nominated by the ruling party could impact perceptions of its impartiality.
In late February 2023 thousands of protesters, backed by the Eurosceptic and Russophile Shor Party and organised by the Movement for the People, marched in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, to demonstrate against the pro-Western government. Known as a self-proclaimed breakaway region, Transnistria has an active and effective pro-Moscow political network. The protesters rattled the fragile Moldovan government with the demand for easing living costs.
The protests were held after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of intercepting a Russian plot to destabilise an already volatile situation in Moldova. Additionally, President Sandu has also deployed harsh rhetoric, accusing Russia of using "saboteurs" disguised as civilians to disrupt the country's political stability.
On 19 June 2023 the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the government’s November 2022 request to dissolve the Shor Party for crimes including illicit campaign financing and working to support Russia’s malign influence in the country. Pursuant to the ruling, Shor Party members of parliament became independent members without the right to join other parliamentary factions. Parliament approved a law on July 31 to ban executive officers, party members in elective offices, or party members on the list of the alternative candidates during elections from any party declared unconstitutional from running for elective offices for five years.
On 29 September 2023, the Constitutional Court suspended the five-year ban prohibiting former members of unconstitutional parties from competing in elections, in effect enabling approximately 600 former Shor Party members to register to run in November’s local elections. On October 4, the Emergency Situations Commission (CSE) adopted a decision to establish a more narrow, individualized criteria for those not permitted to run in the November 5 local elections. Effectively, this decision banned 102 Shor Party leaders from seeking office. Individuals subject to restrictions had the right to challenge the decision in the Chisinau Court of Appeals. Several politicians and experts criticized the measures, noting that parliament adopted them quickly without public consultations.
On 03 November 2023, two days before the first round of local elections, the CSE determined that candidates of the Sansa Party, which was affiliated with fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, would have their registration cancelled and should be removed from the ballot throughout the country. The CSE stated they acted based upon evidence submitted by the SIS demonstrating that the Sansa Party had taken over the banned Shor Party’s party structures and had engaged in widespread vote buying and illegal campaign spending on a scale unprecedented in the country’s history. The SIS published a detailed report on the evidence they compiled against Sansa, including financing and support from the Russian government.
Oligarch Ilan Shor, sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in Moldova for bank fraud, held the third congress of primary and territorial organizations of his supporters in a month in Moscow on April 17. Members of the Shor party, banned in Moldova, aim to prevent Moldova's European integration and turn the country toward the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The oligarch promises to continue holding meetings in the Russian capital, where his supporters from Moldova can fly or come by bus. Ilan Shor fled Moldova in 2019 and hid in Israel for more than four years. But now, according to the General Police Inspectorate, he has been living permanently in Moscow since February 25. Russia had previously refused to extradite him to Chisinau, despite an extradition treaty for those who have committed crimes.
"We can say that the Kremlin has placed its bets on Ilan Shor as the "chief manager for Moldova," says Vitaly Andrievskiy, director of the Institute for Effective Politics. It is Shor, the Moldovan political scientist continues, "who will now manage the finances that are allocated to destabilize the situation in Moldova, and he will be used in selecting candidates for the post of president."
"The Kremlin's objectives are clear - Moscow needs to create a zone of instability that will distract attention from the military actions in Ukraine, and also disrupt Moldova's European integration," the expert believes. In May, after Orthodox Easter, Andrievsky suggests, we should expect an escalation of the situation in Moldova. "The first charge," in his words, will be the march on Victory Day on May 9, and then protest rallies against the country's pro-European government may become regular. The main striking force, according to Andrievsky, will be the pro-Russian party "Revival", created to replace the banned party "Shor".
The main political event on the eve of the election campaign in Moldova was the attempt by the leader of the largest opposition party of socialists (PSRM) Igor Dodon to nominate a single candidate capable of really opposing the current pro-European president Maia Sandu . The PSRM proposed former Prosecutor General Alexandru Stoianoglo as such a candidate, whom it presents as a victim of political reprisal. The former prosecutor general was arrested in October 2021 and placed under house arrest on charges of abuse of office, corruption and false statements. He pleaded not guilty to any of the charges. Six months later, the Supreme Council of Prosecutors proposed to the country's president to dismiss Stoianoglo from his post, assessing his performance as unsatisfactory, and in September 2023, Maia Sandu signed a corresponding decree. Maia Sandu, in turn, commenting on the nomination of Alexandru Stoianoglo from the PSRM, said that "the oligarchs and the Kremlin have agreed and found a candidate."
Valeriu Pasha, the executive director of the expert association WatchDog, noted pro-Russian forces had stepped up propaganda of the narrative of an imminent war that will allegedly begin if the country's president, Maia Sandu, leads Moldova to join the EU. "There is no sensible justification for this attitude," he notes. "But among Russian-speaking citizens, such an information attack has a cumulative effect."
It then became clear that the presidential ballots would be quite long, but the opposition candidates' ratings were not very high. According to the results of a poll by the Institute for European Policy and Reforms (IPRE), published on 30 July 2024, some 30% of respondents were ready to vote for Maia Sandu, Igor Dodon was in second place with 13%, and Renato Usatii was in third place with 6.5%.
By August 1, the former Prime Minister during the Communist Party's rule, Vasile Tarlev, the former anti-corruption prosecutor Victoria Furtuna, who resigned amid a scandal over restricted access to state secrets, as well as nominees from two parties, had also announced their desire to run: the European Social Democrats nominated former Defense Minister Valeriu Plescu, and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) nominated Stefan Savitzky.
Of the thirteen contenders, ten are pro-Kremlin candidates and they act systematically, which is a serious threat, notes Vitaly Andrievsky, director of the Institute for Effective Politics. The Kremlin, he explains, is now helping everyone to determine the favorite in the second round. At the same time, Ilan Shor, realizing that it is unrealistic to win against Maia Sandu, is selling the Kremlin the idea of disrupting the referendum on Moldova's accession to the EU. The Communists and Socialists called on their supporters to simply boycott the referendum, considering it a ploy by Maia Sandu to mobilize votes for her. And Shor's parties have already launched a rabid campaign against joining the EU. For example, the leader of the Chance party, Alexei Lungu, said that the EU "views Moldova as a platform for social and military experiments."
There were revealing developments in Moldova ahead of the October presidential elections. Government spokesman Daniel Voda threw in the phrase "disinformation" when visiting the town of Taraclia, where people convinced him that Moldova has a puppet government controlled by the US and the EU, given the grants to the Moldovan authorities from the US and EU for anti-Russian policies.
However, Voda predictably accused his fellow citizens of broadcasting misinformation. The official said that the Moldovan authorities expect "an increase in disinformation and fakes" before the elections, so the state is trying to fight such throw-ins and welcomes private initiatives to combat fakes. Voda noted that the first report on the work of the Center for Combating Disinformation will be coming soon. This center under the Moldovan government was created on the money of the German Foreign Ministry and its work is also supervised by German specialists.
Besides, before the elections, the USA allocated millions of dollars for Maia Sandu to fight "Russian disinformation", i.e. money for the election campaign of her protégé. In Moldova, an analog of the Ukrainian Mirotvorets website has also appeared, where politicians accused of "cooperation with Russian special services" are included. Almost all presidential candidates, except Sandu herself, have been included there. The country's Prime Minister Dorin Recean supported the creation of the site.
The Moldovan authorities consistently carry out repressions against pro-Russian politicians and media, as they simply cannot oppose another opinion. At the same time, they have an ambitious task to break away from Russia and serve the military and economic interests of neighboring Ukraine.
Late on the evening of October 20, shortly after polls for the presidential election and EU referendum across Moldova had closed, a stony-faced President Maia Sandu briefly addressed reporters. There had been, she said, an "unprecedented assault on freedom and democracy in our country." Moldova's pro-Western president went on to say that fraud in the election and referendum had happened on an "unprecedented scale" and that attempts had been made to buy up to 300,000 votes. Sandu spoke for just 90 seconds and left without taking any questions.
Presidential elections started in Moldova on 20 October 2024. In Moldova, 100% of votes were counted after the first round of presidential elections and 100% of votes in the referendum on joining the European Union. 50.46% voted for joining the EU. 42.45% of voters voted for Maya Sanda, 25.98% voted for Oleksandr Stoyanoglo. Her predominantly pro-Russian opponents had received considerably more votes than opinion polls had indicated. The second round of presidential elections will be held between incumbent President Maya Sandu and dismissed Prosecutor General Oleksandr Stoyanoglo, who is supported by pro-Russian opposition parties.
At a briefing in Brussels on October 21, the spokesman of the EU foreign policy service, Peter Stano, said that the election campaign in Moldova took place in conditions of unprecedented interference by Russia , which tried to destabilize the democratic process.
Police in Moldova outlined how hundreds of thousands of votes were bought — with massive support from Russia — in the run-up to the country's presidential election and EU referendum. Senior police officials stated that manipulation had played a major role in the outcome of the two polls, and that the fraud was unprecedented not just in terms of its scale, but also in terms of the methods used, which have never been seen before in Europe. According to the country's chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, a criminal group with links to the Israeli-born Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor, who now lives in Russia, has since April involved about 138,000 Moldovan citizens in a network that sought to buy election votes.
Shor, who fled to Israel in 2019, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his leading role in what became known in Moldova as the "theft of the century," where approximately €1 billion was stolen from Moldova's banking system by means of a complex lending structure between 2012 and 2014. He was jointly responsible for a number of huge disinformation campaigns in the run-up to the recent vote. One of the narratives peddled in these campaigns was that EU integration would mean that Moldova would be dragged by NATO into a war against Russia.
Accounts at the Russian Promsvyazbank (PSB) were opened for these 138,000 people. PSB, which was once a privately owned bank but has been state-owned since 2018, is considered the bank of the Russian armaments industry and was subject to Western sanctions even before Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine. Moldovan citizens were able to use a PSB app to access money paid into their PSB accounts, in return for their votes and the votes of their relatives. The police said individuals received the equivalent of about €100 ($108) for a vote in favor of a pro-Russian candidate in the presidential election or a vote against Moldova's ambition to join the EU in the referendum.
Money was also paid out by hundreds of so-called "local coordinators," who were tasked with verifying whether the people in their respective group had indeed cast their votes the way they had promised. The voters in question could provide evidence of their vote by taking a photo of their ballot paper in the polling booth. The Moldovan police have recorded about 1.4 million transactions using the PSB app by people living in Moldova since April. Most of the money — approximately $39 million (€36 million) in total — was transferred to PSB accounts belonging to Moldovan citizens in the weeks running up to the election and the referendum.
President Sandu herself said on the day after the election that the judiciary had not done enough to prevent the fraud. She implied that widespread corruption was responsible for the fact that such election interference was even possible in the first place. Despite all this, Sandu avoided directly accusing Russia of being behind the fraud.
Moldovans voted 03 November 2024 in a presidential runoff that could see Moscow gain more influence in a diplomatic battleground between Russia and the European Union. Pro-Western incumbent Maia Sandu, who had accelerated the southeast European nation's push to leave Moscow's orbit and join the EU, faced Alexandr Stoianoglo, an ex-prosecutor general backed by the pro-Russian Socialist Party. The fortunes of Sandu, who set Moldova on the long path of EU accession talks in June, would be closely followed in Brussels a week after the Georgia elections.
Stoianoglo's East-West balancing rhetoric contrasts with Sandu's four years in power, during which ties with the Kremlin have unravelled, a slew of Moscow's diplomats have been expelled and she has condemned Russia's attacks of neighbouring Ukraine. Moscow has said that her government is "Russophobic". Sandu portrays Stoianoglo as the Kremlin's man and a political Trojan horse, painting Sunday's vote as a choice between a bright future in the EU by 2030 and one of uncertainty and instability.
Stoianoglo says that is untrue and that she has failed to look out for the interests of ordinary Moldovans. He accuses Sandu of divisive politics in a country that has a Romanian-speaking majority and large Russian-speaking minority. Stoianoglo says that as president he too would back EU integration but also develop ties with Russia in the national interest. He has vowed to try to revive cheap Russian gas supplies and said he would meet with President Vladimir Putin if Moldovans wanted it.
Overall, the media provided voters with sufficient information to make an informed choice, including through a debate between the two candidates. The public broadcaster provided more coverage of the two candidates in the second round, although a large portion of its radio coverage was devoted to the government, without critical analysis. Media monitoring showed that, while the four television channels monitored devoted fairly equal amounts of airtime in their newscasts to both candidates, they displayed a concerning bias in their tone, with coverage of Sandu almost exclusively positive or neutral, while that of her opponent, Alexandr Stoianoglo, was more critical, including in less positive and some negative coverage in editorial programs.
The outcome of the vote is likely to set the tone for next summer's parliamentary elections where Sandu's ruling party is expected to struggle to retain its majority and which will determine the stripe of the future government.
"These elections were organized under extremely challenging circumstances, facing unprecedented schemes to corrupt the electoral process. Despite this, the electoral administration deserves our full recognition for a job well done. None of this would have been possible without the hundreds of committed women working at polling stations," said Jone Blikra, Head of the PACE delegation. “The second round has, unfortunately, confirmed how deeply divided Moldova truly is. The president-elect will need to build bridges to heal these societal rifts, especially with parliamentary elections on the horizon next year."
"The most undemocratic [elections] in all the years of Moldovan independence," Russia's FM spokewoman Maria Zakharova said, commenting on the second round of the presidential elections in Moldova. "Its distinctive features were unprecedented repressions by the authorities against the opposition and independent media, especially Russian-language ones, blatant interference by Western countries in the electoral process and large-scale use of administrative resources by the authorities," Zakharova said.
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry noted that, as in the 2020 elections, Sandu's victory was ensured by the votes of the Moldovan diaspora living in Western countries, while the majority of residents of Moldova itself, "essentially, passed a vote of no confidence in the current president and the destructive course of the authorities." "The results of the second round of the presidential elections confirmed the existence of a deep split in Moldovan society, which manifested itself during the first round and the referendum on EU membership. This polarization was provoked by the short-sighted policies of the country's leadership and the gross interference of Western countries in its internal political processes."
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