Moldova to vote on the EU, the chill of the No vote in the referendum – Politics

by Sabina Rosset Reaffirmed “the European identity of the people of the Republic of Moldova” and “the irreversibility of the European path” it declares “integration into the European Union as a strategic objective”: Moldova voted on this question and if the very first projections are representative, it has literally frozen expectations for the referendum for the highly symbolic change of the Constitution wanted by the pro-European president Maia Sandu, resulting in a resounding victory for the No vote. The vote is not binding for Moldova’s accession to the EU, but if it bare will confirm the first data certainly marks a setback in the country’s race towards the west: in 456 sections out of 2,219 scrutinized the No is in the lead with 58.1%, against the 41.9% of the Yes. A sensational reversal compared to the 55% for Yes predicted by the previous polls, which inevitably also raises big questions about the capacity of the hybrid war conducted by Moscow on Moldovan territory. The vote from the very first projections of the presidential elections seems like a very bitter victory for Sandu, who leads with 34.1%: not only will he have to compete in the run-off with the pro-Russian socialist Alexandr Stoianoglo, but he brings home (in 319 out of 2,219 sections) a result significantly lower than the CBS-AXA poll which saw it at 35.8%. The electoral commission, despite recording several incidents, declared the vote valid, which saw a rather high turnout: 51.5% at 9pm compared to the 48.3% recorded at the same time in the 2021 elections and the 45.6% of the presidential elections of 2020. In the early afternoon of Monday there will be an evaluation of the vote by the OECD observers. On election day, Moldovan electoral authorities reported large turnouts at polling stations in France, Italy, Türkiye, Romania, Belgium or Russia. In Romania, in particular, there were very long queues outside the polling stations set up in Bucharest in the middle of the day. The Moldovan Foreign Ministry also spoke of queues artificially created in the two polling stations in Moscow, to hinder voting operations. The Moldovan police also reported some serious violations of the electoral process, reporting in particular 34 incidents such as photographed, damaged ballots, bought votes, unauthorized demonstrations, or organized transport of voters, and even cases of hooliganism. In recent days, hundreds of arrests had taken place in the last few hours to stop a pervasive machine of electoral corruption. The agitprop, it emerged in particular, was unscrupulous in order to destabilize this small and poor state between Romania and Ukraine, slightly larger than Lombardy, 3 and a half million inhabitants: a shower of money, 15 million euros, channeled into the country by the fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, who in addition to hammering the Moldovans with various Telegram channels (the best known, Evrasia, has been closed), would also have seen fit to try to buy the No of 130 thousand voters. Moscow denies any role, but to make the picture more threatening, there is also the presence of around 2 thousand Russian soldiers stationed on the doorstep, in the territory of the self-proclaimed independent pro-Russian republic of Transnistria (not recognized by the UN countries for which is formally part of Moldova), and the very close war in Ukraine.