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From: TT
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Photo: Roveliu Buga / AP / TT
Moldova’s incoming president, Maia Sandu, will vote in Sunday’s elections.
Friendly EU contender Maia Sandu won Sunday’s presidential election in Moldova and her supporters gathered outside the opposition headquarters overnight to celebrate. The result of the elections is not expected to be well received by Russia.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, former Prime Minister Maia Sandu has been declared the winner in the second round of Moldova’s presidential elections, announces the country’s electoral commission. The 48-year-old center-right politician has received 57 percent of the vote, compared with 44 percent for the current pro-Russian president, Igor Dodon.
Outside the opposition headquarters in the capital Chisinau, Sandu’s supporters gathered overnight.
– A country for young people, they chanted.
Links with Russia
Current President Igor Dodon has close ties to Moscow, which keeps a close eye on the tiny former Soviet republic. Russia wants polarized Moldova to remain part of its sphere of influence, and President Vladimir Putin asked Moldovans to vote for Dodon before the elections.
Now it will be the challenger Sandu who will take over the presidency. She 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.
Clear dissatisfaction
Dissatisfaction was evident among many voters who were interviewed in connection with the election.
– Corruption is everywhere, in healthcare, within the legal system, says Viktoria, a lawyer who voted for Sandu but 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”.
Poor Moldova officially has around 3.5 million inhabitants, but no one really knows how many people live in the country as many have left. The share of Moldovans, mainly in Italy and Germany, was high.
Moldova borders Ukraine to the east and Romania to the west and the country’s language is similar to Romanian, but the alliance has previously been with Russian Moscow.
Also, there is the separatist region of Transnistria along the eastern border, the region was hit by a brief civil war in 1992, and that is a continuous focus of unrest, with mainly Russian-speaking separatists seeing themselves as independent from the capital, Chisinau.
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