Moldova’s president bet big on the EU referendum. It may cost her dearly
Moldova has voted to enshrine its EU membership aspirations in the nation’s constitution by a razor-thin margin after a campaign awash with accusations of Russian interference and political repression. It’s an awkward moment for President Maia Sandu, who organised the vote to coincide with her own bid for re-election – and failed to win the absolute majority needed to triumph in the first round.
It wasn’t until the final votes trickled in from Moldova’s far-flung diaspora that the final decision became clear. By an eyelash-thin margin of 50.46 percent, Moldovan voters at home and abroad had cast their ballots calling for the dream of EU membership to be enshrined in the nation’s constitution, nudging the country of some 2.6 million people on an irreversible path to a European future. As mandates go, they don’t come much more meagre.
Instead, bruised and furious, she will be heading into a frantic second round in just two weeks’ time, pitting her against former prosecutor general Alexander Stoianoglo, who won a better-than-expected 26 percent of the vote on the Party of Socialists’ slate. Depending on the decisions made by the rival opposition camps over the next fortnight, it could be tight – Renato Usatii, who came third with just under 14 percent, backed Sandu in 2020. He has said he’s unlikely to do it again.
Ultimately, he said, many voters may well have seen the EU membership not just as a referendum on the country’s geopolitical future but on the performance of the president herself.
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