Chișinău (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Maia Sandu was re-elected to a second term as president of Moldova by defeating Alexandr Stoianoglo, backed by pro-Russian forces.
Pro-EU incumbent Maia Sandu has succeeded in a second term in a key presidential race against a Russia-friendly rival. With more than 99% of votes counted in the second round, Sandu had 55.03% of the vote, according to the Central Electoral Commission. The ex-prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, got votes under 45%.
How did Sandu address alleged foreign interference?
Speaking in the capital Chișinău, Sandu struck a conciliatory tone and expressed she had listened to those who had voted both for and against her, adding that her focus in the coming years would be to be a president for all Moldovans. She claimed that her country’s vote had confronted an “unprecedented attack” through alleged plans including dirty money, vote-buying and electoral interference “by hostile forces from outside the country.” “You have demonstrated that nothing can stand in the way of the people’s power when they choose to speak through their vote,” she expressed.
What role did foreign influence play in the election?
Moldovan police stated they had “reasonable evidence” of methodical transportation of voters, illegal under the country’s electoral principle, to polling stations from within the country and from overseas and are “investigating and registering proof in connection with air transport activities from Russia to Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey.” “Such measures are taken to protect the integrity of the electoral process and to ensure that every citizen’s vote is cast freely without undue pressure or influence,” police stated.
Moldova’s foreign ministry stated that polling stations in Frankfurt, Germany, and Liverpool and Northampton in the UK had been pointed by false bomb threats, which were “planned only to stop the voting process.”
Moreover, Moldova’s Prime Minister Dorin Recean stated that people throughout the country had received “anonymous death threats via phone calls” in what he called “an extreme attack” to intimidate voters in the former Soviet republic, which has a population of approximately 2.5 million people.
