Election of the Weekend III: Moldova

The third election this weekend takes us to the Republic of Moldova, a small landlocked country of around 2.4 million people sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. The location provides an important context clue for why this country’s election might have broader geopolitical implications:

In the final days before a high-stakes parliamentary election, Moldova is caught in a war of words. While drones and missiles rain down on Ukraine next door, here Russia fights a different kind of battle with the European Union over whether the country’s future lies with Brussels or Moscow.

Russia’s efforts to pull Moldova, a former Soviet state of just 2.5 million wedged between Ukraine and Romania, back into its orbit are part of a wider campaign to reassert influence across Eastern Europe and prevent its neighbors from formally aligning with the West, an ambition it largely achieved in Georgia. The Kremlin has also faced allegations of interfering in Romanian elections, a NATO member state.

Flanked by three Moldovan flags and the European Union’s circles of gold stars, Moldovan President Maia Sandu delivered a grim warning on Sept. 22 about Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election.

“The Kremlin is pouring hundreds of millions of euros to buy hundreds of thousands of votes on both banks of the Nistru river and abroad,” she said. “People are intoxicated daily with lies. Hundreds of individuals are paid to provoke disorder, violence and spread fear.”

….Some experts fear that should PAS lose the majority in the parliament, Moldova may follow the fate of Georgia, another former Soviet republic that slid back toward Moscow’s orbit after a party linked to a powerful local oligarch targeted the citizens with relentless messaging about the perils of aligning with the West.

Russia already has troops in stationed in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova and having a Russia-friendly power in Chisinau would potentially give Moscow another way into Ukraine, as its key port of Odesa is just a few dozen miles away from the Moldovan border.

Having an ally in Moldova could also help Moscow expand its intelligence operations in Europe as many Moldovans have Romanian citizenship, which gives them free access to work and live in the union.

In 2024, a razor-thin majority — 50.46 to 49.54 percent — voted in favor of joining the E.U. during a referendum, a far weaker mandate than expected by Sandu’s government. Elected on a staunchly pro-European and anti-corruption platform, Sandu now faces the daunting task of pushing Moldova closer to Brussels in a political climate she said is saturated with Russian disinformation.

Yikes. Sandu, the pro-European president, is not up for election until 2028 (she won last year by around 9%); today’s election is for the parliament. But it’s a parliamentary regime; the president’s power isn’t entirely ceremonial but parliament is where the action is. PAS, the ruling pro-EU party, holds 63 of 101 seats, and is the leading party in polling, but is generally under 50%. In second and closing the gap quickly is the intended beneficiary of the massive Russian disinformation campaign, BEP, (long version: Patriotic Electoral Bloc of Socialists, Communists, the Heart and Future of Moldova), a nominally left wing but in practice Putinist coalition. In third is the “Alternativa” list, which is polling at the edge of viability (Moldova uses countrywide closed list PR with a 5% threshold for parties and 7% for blocs; Alternativa is averaging just above 7%). I don’t have a great handle on exactly what’s going on with this party, but they are openly pro-EU, sometimes arguing for a push for speedier accension process, but both PAS and Brussels “see Alternativa as a Trojan horse designed to stall accession talks from within.” Another conservative pro-Russia minor party, an agrarian left-populist Russophilic party called “Our Party” is also polling to clear the threshold and make parliament.

Yesterday Moldova’s electoral commission responded to the current attack on democratic politics with a bit of militant democracy, banning a couple of pro-Russian parties:

The parties barred Friday, the Heart of Moldova and Moldova Mare, face allegations of illegal financing and voter bribery. The Heart of Moldova was one of four parties in the Russia-friendly Patriotic Electoral Bloc, or BEP, which is viewed as one of the main opponents of the ruling pro-Western Party of Action and Solidarity in Sunday’s election. The Moldova Mare was another opposition party, but was widely expected to present less of a challenge.

The Central Electoral Commission’s action against the Heart of Moldova was based on a ruling a day earlier by the Chisinau Court of Appeal, which restricted the party’s activities for 12 months. The justice ministry requested the restrictions following searches earlier this month on Heart of Moldova party members that led to allegations of voter bribery, illegal party financing and money laundering.

The BEP says it wants “friendship with Russia, “permanent neutrality” and a “state that serves the people, not officials.”

The electoral commission said in a statement that all candidates proposed by Heart of Moldova will be removed from the bloc’s list of candidates, and gave the bloc 24 hours to adjust its list to meet the representation thresholds required by electoral law.

As far as I can tell, this probably doesn’t actually help matters much; removing Heart of Moldova candidates from BEP’s list may take some of the nastiest characters out of parliament but won’t appreciably change BEP’s total power. Mare of Moldova was polling around 2%; if those votes go to viable Russophilic parties this actually makes things worse. As is often the case, militant democracy measures are enacted after it’s too late to reasonably hope they might work.

Sometimes I research and read a bunch about an election, and end up having no idea who I should be rooting for. This is….not one of those cases. Voting takes place Sunday, starting in a few hours. Here’s hoping Moldovans turn out to be less credulous marks than too many of our fellow citizens when it comes to Russian propaganda.