Pro-Russian Candidate Sweeps to Victory in Moldova

Mr. Dodon's victory complicates Moldova's efforts to align with the Western bloc.

Igor Dodon, presidential candidate for the Party of Socialists, led his party to apredictable victory in the presidential run-off election on November 13 against the Action and Solidarity Party leader, Maia Sandu.

The election followed a first round of voting at the end of October, in which Dodon narrowly fell short of an outright majority that would have declared him the outright winner, foregoing a second ballot.

This time around, with only two contenders running, Dodon secured 52.18 percent of the vote compared to Sandu’s 47.82 percent. Dodon, a candidate that positioned himself as a pro-Russian Euro-sceptic, blamed EU-friendly leadership of Moldova for a number of scandals that have rocked the country in the last few years.BBC reports that in 2014 $1 billion mysteriously vanished from the the banking system of Europe’s poorest nation. The country was left with a bill equivalent to an eighth of its GDP.

During the campaign,Dodon pledged to scrap the 2014 EU Association Agreement, but he already appears to be backing down on the issue. The Moldovan President-elect announced, in an interview on November 15, that he is not going to to turn his back on Europe, only that he wants better relations with Russia.

Dodon’s opponent, the pro-European Maia Sandu, is not satisfied with the result of the Sunday election, which she said was “poorly organized.”Radio Free Europe writes that there were long lines of expat Moldovan citizens who were unable to vote at embassies across the EU. Election officials purportedly did not send enough ballot paper for Moldovans abroad; however, Dodon’s victory is unlikely to have been affected as his margin of victory was substantial. The victor asked Sandu if she could “calm down” the frustrated portion of the electorate that voted for her.

In an episode that echoes events in the United States, young Moldovans in the capital, Chisinau,showed their disappointment by protesting. Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, marching towards the offices of the Central Election Committee and chanting “down with the mafia.”

Moldova’s position between Russia and Europe has always been precarious. Russian troops are stationed in the fiercely pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria in Moldova. Furthermore, Moldova obtains most of its energy from Russia.

In Bulgaria, too, on the same day, a pro-Russian politician, Rumen Radev, was elected. He opposes the EU sanctions in reaction to Putin’s actions in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea and has heaped praise on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Voters around the world are forsaking Western unity for populism.