European Forum

Moldova early elections set for July 29th

On June 16th Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin officially dissolved the parliament and set the date for the early parliamentary elections for July 29th, a Wednesday.

The dissolution of parliament follows the regular parliamentary elections of April 5th, the official results of which gave Voronin’s Communist Party a sweeping victory and the necessary 61 seats in parliament; the exact amount of votes needed to elect the next President (as he himself could not run for a third term). However, after massive protests that saw the plundering of the lower levels of the parliament building by young people – already termed as ‘Twitter-revolution’ – the Communists decided to recount the votes. As a result, they ended up with 60 seats in parliament. With all three parliamentary opposition parties boycotting the ensuing Presidential elections twice, the ruling party had no choice but to dissolve the parliament and announce early elections, as dictated by the constitution.

In a national televised address, President Voronin announced the dissolution of parliament and the early elections while blaming the opposition for the political crisis in the country and calling for all parties to not only prepare to celebrate victory, but to also be prepared for a loss in order not to repeat the 7 April rallies.

In the meantime Moldovan political parties are preparing for what promises to be an intense electoral campaign. The three liberal-oriented parliamentary opposition parties have already announced they will run for parliament separately.

The centrist-left parties, however, have been trying to unite. Following a call from the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to the Democratic Party (DP), the Centrist Union (CU) and the Moldova Unita, the latter and the DP expressed a positive attitude towards a possible unification. However, nothing definite has been announced yet.

In a more recent development, parliamentary speaker Marian Lupu left the Communist Party. His official reason was not being willing to continue playing the Communists’ ‘dirty games’, however, it has been speculated that he left the party in a disappointed to not be able to fulfil his ambitions of becoming the party’s Presidential candidate.

All opposition parties then competed to draw Lupu to their side, as the latter is a very popular political figure in the country and is said to account for 10-15% of the Communist vote in the 5 April elections. Eventually, he decided to accept the offer from the Democratic Party following the latter’s leader Dmitru Diacov’s offer to secede the leadership of DP to Lupu.

Currently, the parties are preparing for the early election, which promises to be difficult. The date chosen by the Communists, being in the middle of school holidays as well as a working day, may result in the opposition’s main electorate – the younger generations – to be absent from the polls (due to work schedules) or absent from the country altogether (due to the holiday season). The Communists’ electorate – mainly pensioners – should have no trouble voting.

Sources: Azi.md, photo: Itar-Tass