Pro-EU forces gaining ground in Moldova.

3rd December 2010,

Democratist is mulling over the results of last Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Moldova; the small, very poor, and often overlooked former Soviet Republic wedged geographically between Romania and Ukraine, and geopolitically between the EU and Russia.

The 28th November poll is the third inconclusive vote to have taken place in the country since April 2009, and on each occasion no political group has been able to muster the 61 MPs (out of a total of 101) required by the constitution to elect the President.

However, despite the ongoing deadlock, these polls do seem to mark a continuing and considerable shift in political power and popular support in Moldova over the past 18 months.

While Vladimir Voronin’s PCRM Communists (who ruled Moldova between 2001-2009) have managed to remain a blocking minority of 42 seats in parliament, this most recent poll bears witness to the rapidly growing popularity of Prime Minister Vlad Filat’s Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (LDPM), which took almost 30% of the vote (compared with 12.4% as recently as April last year).

The LDPM has therefore somewhat eclipsed the its two remaining partners in the Alliance for European Integration (AEI) bloc that came to power in 2009 (which both took around 10%) but the LDPM’s growing popularity also seems to reflect a broader consolidation of pro-European forces, and a sharp decline in support for the Communists, in polls that were described as meeting most international commitments by the OSCE.

Democratist hopes that given this setback, the PCRM might see some sense, and come to an agreement with the other parties to allow for the election of a new Moldovan President (although this currently seems unlikely).

Furthermore, we hope the EU will also take note of the implications of these results, and continue to use all the tools at their disposal (including liberalized visa regime, trade agreement etc.) to push for the continued strengthening of democracy, and implementation of structural reforms in Moldova.