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At 90 percent of votes counted since Sunday election in Moldova, pro-European parties were predicted a tally of 56-58 seats at parliament and the Russia-minded to settle at 43-44. With 101 seats all in all, just like in Estonia, the next Moldovan government will probably lean towards the EU and the West, to continue on current path of integration.
Meanwhile, the major voter magnet and Russian leaning Party of Socialists thinks the association treaty with EU ought to be annulled and the state steered to the East, integrating with Russia and her ex-Soviet satellites based customs union. The communists, however, suffered a mighty fall losing over half of former support.
Still, it’s obvious in the elections result that Moldova is quite divided – into two – in its strategic choice of direction, the European trend in a majority rather thin. At that, the support of Russian or Western minded parties is quite clear-cut also geographically. Doubtless, the situation awards Russia certain options to impact Moldova’s politics towards destabilisation. Already at the recent G20 summit in Australia, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel mentioned that Moldova may be a next conflict area after Georgia and Ukraine.
As a sign of potential instability, the pre-elections mess was quite impressive. Namely, a party far from marginal in its support – Patria, led by the businessman Renato Usatii with dealings in Russia – was removed from elections altogether due to illegal foreign financing. The chairman of the party fled the country. Promptly, the removal of Patria was disapproved by Russian foreign ministry. From the Russian side, media coverage of the results has also been rather clear: the portal gazeta.ru, for instance, featured the headline «Russia lost Moldova». Russian vice prime minister Dmitri Rogozin, however, advised the «comrades» to think about what the sidelined Transnistrians would have voted for.
Moldova continues as one of the poorest nations in Europe; hundreds of thousands of its citizens labour in Russia and elsewhere as foreign workers. By Russia, import restrictions have been imposed towards many agricultural products vital for the Moldovan economy. A part of the country’s territory lies in «frozen conflict» conditions, under the power of a separatist Russian-minded yet unrecognised republic of Transnistria.
For Moldova, the path towards becoming a normal European state is not easy, even though the land has deep historic links and a common language with Romania, a full member of the EU. Hopefully, Moldova is able to tread peacefully the path chosen, the adversary unable to provoke some «hot» conflict.