Presidential elections in Moldova.

The first week

On November 1, 2020, the next presidential elections are to be held in the
Republic of Moldova. This is the fourth direct election of the President of Moldova
in the history of the independent Republic of Moldova. Given the turbulent
situation in the “election season 2020” in the CIS countries (Republic of Belarus,
Kyrgyzstan), the election race in Ukraine’s neighboring country also requires
particular attention of experts and politicians. Thus, we offer you a series of
materials of our expert from Chisinau LEONID KRETSU highlighting the current
election campaign in Moldova.
On October 1, they launched the pre-election process in Moldova for the
presidential election which is to be held on November 1. It started pretty quietly,
which is out of Moldova’s character, but the conditions in which they are
happening are completely different from the previous ones. This time, the elections
are held in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already claimed
1,461 lives of Moldova’s citizens.
This year, there are 8 candidates for the presidency of Moldova. They
include:
• Renato USATÎI – аn obnoxious Moldavian businessman and politician,
the mayor of Bălți, being notorious for his statements set in the context of Oleh
Liashko’s style.
• Andrei NĂSTASE, – one of Moldova’s main opposition politicians.
• Tudor DELIU, – the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PDLM)
candidate, chaired by Vlad Filat, who has been recently released from prison on
charges of corruption and abuse of power.
• Igor DODON, – the current president of Moldova. Although being
registered as an independent candidate, he enjoys the support of the Socialist Party
of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), which he chaired de jure till 2016, but de
facto he did so during all 4 years of his presidency.
• Violeta IVANOV, – the “Șor Party” candidate chaired by Ilan Șor, the
businessman whose name appears in several corruption cases, but this does not
prevent him from becoming the mayor of Orhei and the Member of Parliament.
However, last summer he was forced to leave the country and is now abroad, most
likely in Israel.
• Maia SANDU, – the former Prime Minister of Moldova. DODON’s rival
in the second round of the previous election.
• Octavian ȚÎCU, – the National Unity Party (PUN) candidate. The main
message of his program is unification with Romania. For a long time, the CEC
refused to register Mr. Țîcu as candidate, arguing that he did not have the required
number of signatures. However, after being recounted, the required number of
signatures was confirmed.
 • Dorin CHIRTOACĂ, – the former mayor of Chisinau, who supports the
UNIREA bloc (Union), that consolidates the parties advocating unification with
Romania. He also had the same issues as the previous candidate.
Andrian CANDU also planned to run in the elections, but he was not
registered as a candidate. Andrian CANDU is the former speaker of parliament
who ran for the “Pro-Moldova” party. This political unit once splintered off the
Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM), and A. CANDU is now tied to the oligarch
Vlad PLAHOTNYUK, who fled the country in 2019 on charges of trying to seize
power.
Sergei TOMA, Alexander KALININ, and such veterans of Moldavian
politics as Constantin OBROK (an active figure in the independence struggle of
Moldova in the late 1980s) and Ion COSTAŞ (the Minister of Defense during the
1992 war) also were not registered as candidates.
So far, the sociological forecasts show that the election campaign will be
similar to the 2016 with two rounds. SANDU and DODON reach the second round
and the latter wins by a small margin. However, there are several factors that
differentiate this year’s election campaign from the previous one.
Firstly, it is the COVID-19 pandemic. In Moldova, the situation is getting
worse every day. As of October 11th, 62151 patients with the new type of
coronavirus were recorded in the country. The epidemic has already caused the
level of GDP of the Republic of Moldova falling by 11.5%. The quarantine
restrictions introduced in spring this year have caused significant losses to small
and medium-sized businesses, which mainly consist of services. New restrictions
are already causing dissatisfaction and protests, as happened this week in the town
of Cimișlia, which is in the south of the country where the situation is rather
difficult.
Secondly, it is the largest drought in recent years, having damaged
Moldova’s agriculture, which is an important part of the country’s economy. The
lack of clear measures taken by the government and the president, as well as their
weak support for the agricultural sector caused public discontent and protests of
the farmers.
Thirdly, there is fragmentation on the left “flank”. It is a usual fact for the
country that the right-wing forces of Moldova are separated and each political
party nominates its own candidate. But the left ones, on the contrary, are usually
more consolidated. However, this year 3 candidates were nominated from the left-
centrist political forces (DODON, USATÎI and IVANOV). And if in 2016 R.
USATÎI supported I.DODON, over four years they have gathered enough
disagreements between each other. This may lead to the fact that the voters of
USATÎI and ȘOR may not support DODON if the latter reaches the second round.
In turn, such a scenario will allow the right to unite behind its candidate, especially
if his opponent is the incumbent president.
 At the same time, Igor DODON has the chief advantage. First, it is
Russia’s information support, as well as most of nationally-covered central
television channels that support the president and belong to the people of
DODON’s inner circle. Secondly, support of the church, the structure that enjoys
the trust of the vast majority of the country’s population. Third, it is the full
backing of the unrecognized TMR. In 2016, the voters from Transnistria were
brought to the polling station in an organized manner, where they voted for Igor
DODON. This year, the “president of the TMR”, V. Krasnoselsky, a few days
before the start of the presidential race in Moldova, announced that the restrictions
on leaving the territory of the unrecognized republic, imposed in connection with
the epidemic, would be removed on the election day. This provoked a stormy
reaction in Moldova. Some district councils have already announced that they will
not let the polling stations open for Transnistrians on their territory, for security
measures against the coronavirus. In their turn, some organizations of veterans of
the 1992 conflict said they would block the buses with voters from the left bank.
Against this background, the incident that took place this week seems
interesting. On the night of 7/8 October, 2020, the operatives of the so-called
Ministry of State Security of Transnistria arrested 4 Moldavian citizens who lived
on the territory controlled by TMR, but commuted to work on the right bank.
There was even a police officer of the Republic of Moldova among them. After a
while, after Dodon’s conversation with Krasnoselsky, 2 of them were released.
This situation alongside the passive and inactive reaction of the other government
officials, resulted in claims that the incident was planned by DODON, together
with the representatives of Tiraspol, as a PR-campaign to raise the rating of the
President of Moldova.
Elections in the Republic of Moldova have been repeatedly accompanied
by mass protests. Political destabilization in the country is actively used by the
external forces seeking to control the situation and the territory of the Republic of
Moldova, also playing the “frozen conflicts” card.

Roman Ungurianu,
Chisinau, Republic of Moldova