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From: TT
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February 1 | Photo: Roveliu Buga / AP / TT
Presidential election contender Maia Sandu appears headed for victory.
EU friendly candidate Maia Sandu leads when the majority of votes are counted in presidential elections in Moldova.
Current President Igor Dodon, with close ties to Moscow, is two percentage points behind her.
According to forecasts, when 90 percent of the votes were counted, Sandu received just over 51 percent of the votes, while President Dodon received almost 49 percent, Reuters reports.
In the first round, Sandu received 36 percent of the vote, while Dodon received 33 percent.
Aspiring Sandu has worked at the World Bank and was Prime Minister for a brief stint last year before being removed from office in a vote of no confidence.
“We have the opportunity to punish those who stole them, pushed them into poverty and forced them to leave their homes,” he said at the end of the election campaign.
“Lose our country”
The current president Dodon’s tone was equally tense during the election campaign:
“We will lose our country if we show weakness,” he said, warning of vote rigging.
Dissatisfaction was evident among many voters who were interviewed in connection with the election.
– Corruption is everywhere, in health care, within the legal system, says Vikoria, a lawyer who has voted for Sandu, but who suspects electoral fraud.
– The EU has invested a lot of money here, we are a small country, and with all the money we should be millionaires, but we have not seen money, we have not seen results, said voter Sergei Jantouane who voted “against Dodon”.
Moldova officially has about 3.5 million inhabitants, but no one really knows how many people live in the country, one of the poorest in the region, as many have left. The share of Moldovans, mainly in Italy and Germany, is high.
Hotbed of Russian-speaking riots
The almost evenly distributed division is like the geography of the country, and the borders are quite typical of the area where the great powers drew and drew countries.
Moldova borders Ukraine to the east and Romania to the west, the language is similar to Romanian, but the alliance has previously been with Russian Moscow. The country was part of the Soviet Union before its collapse.
In addition, there is the separatist region of Transnistria along the eastern border (the region was hit by a brief civil war in 1992) and it is a continuous focus of unrest where the mainly Russian-speaking separatists see themselves as independent from the capital, Chisinau.
– Regardless of whether Sandu or Dodon wins, there will be protests, predicts the saleswoman Sandra in Chisinau.
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