Moldova Prepares to Vote in High Stakes EU Referendum and Presidential Election

Moldova is heading to the polls in October for presidential elections and an EU referendum, with pro-European incumbent President Maia Sandu seeking a second term but facing Kremlin-backed candidates and disinformation.

The country’s election on 20 October 2024 will be only the third direct presidential election since Moldova’s independence from the Soviet Union and the abolition of the previous system of parliament electing the president.

Sandu is campaigning as a pro-European candidate against many pro-Russian or only nominally pro-European candidates who previously supported closer ties with Russia. 

Her main challenger and likeliest opponent in a potential second round of voting is former Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo.

Stoianoglo is nominally running as a pro-European candidate but is backed by the Socialists, the largest pro-Russian party in parliament, and has been speaking publicly about the need to maintain Moldova’s neutrality and to have a more balanced relationship between Russia and the EU.

At the same time, the former prosecutor general is defending himself in multiple court cases involving corruption and bribery during his time in office. 

Recent polls show Sandu is leading with 47% of decided voters, while Stoianoglo trails at 13%, and all other candidates are polling in single digits. With 18% of undecided voters, the race remains unpredictable.

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In a referendum held parallel to the first round of voting on 20 October, a wafer-thin majority of citizens voted in favour of writing EU accession into the constitution as an irrevocable goal.

Importantly, Moldovan polling is limited to voters on the territory of Moldova controlled by the Moldovan government. This excludes voters in Moldova’s diaspora and those living in the Transnistria region. 

Instead, party polling accounts for the diaspora.

“There are indications that diaspora voters are not as enthusiastic or likely to vote in this election as they were in 2020 when they made up nearly 16% of the electorate in the second round and voted heavily for Sandu,” says Vadim Pistrinciuc, executive director of the think tank Institute for Strategic Initiatives. 

She also recently expressed concerns about diaspora turnout, noting that some voters are frustrated with Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), feeling it has not achieved enough over the past four years.

Election with ‘volatile dynamics’

Regardless of turnout in the diaspora, Sandu’s poll numbers seem strong on paper. However, according to Pistrinciuc, this is somewhat misleading.

Multiple candidates, including independent candidates Vasilie Tarlev and Victoria Fortuna, are believed to be proxies for fugitive Israeli-born Moldovan pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor.

Additionally, nominally pro-European candidates such as Stoianoglo and former Bashkan of Gagauzia Irina Vlah have had close connections to Russia in the past.

Pistrinciuc called the field “volatile” and suggested that the pro-Russian candidates will coordinate throughout the campaign and come together to back a single candidate, either during the campaign period or in the second round of voting. 

This strategy could allow them to suppress turnout by fostering a sense that no single challenger is strong enough to unseat Sandu, weakening her support base.

High stakes and unprecedented disinformation 

On the question of the referendum on joining the EU, also set on 20 October, polls show that around 64% of decided voters would vote ‘yes’ and 36% ‘no’.

Initially, various pro-Russian parties indicated that they would attempt to boycott the referendum to prevent the minimum threshold of votes from being met. 

But this strategy has now been discarded. The Communist Party and the various Shor-linked parties registered to campaign for a ‘no’ vote in the referendum. It remains unclear what the Socialist Party, the largest pro-Russian party, will do.

The re-election of Sandu and the passage of the EU referendum are broadly understood by Moldovans and Moldova watchers to be critical to Moldova’s European ambitions.

This is well understood by the Kremlin, which is conducting an unprecedented interference campaign targeting Moldovan voters with disinformation and propaganda. 

Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns seek to convince voters of the EU’s imminent decline, and the impossibility of Moldova joining the EU, as well as to warn that closer ties with Europe could drag Moldova into the Russian war against Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Shor and other Moldovan fugitive oligarchs are spending money on Facebook and Google advertisements to promote false narratives. 

For example, pro-Russian politicians, including former Moldovan President Igor Dodon, have intensified attacks on the EU, falsely claiming that integration would undermine Moldova’s ‘traditional values.’

Dodon recently alleged that the EU would force Moldova to introduce LGBTQ+ quotas for people in government, part of a broader effort to stoke fears and erode support for European integration.

Anti-EU narratives to discredit the referendum are also aided by the inflated official electoral lists.

Official numbers claim 2.7 million eligible voters in Moldova while experts estimate the true number to be 1.5 million. The discrepancy could be used by pro-Russian groups to challenge the referendum’s legitimacy in case of a ‘yes’ vote.

The stakes are high as all parties agree that the results of the referendum and presidential election will play a major role in determining the future of Moldova and will act as an indicator of the potential outcomes in Moldova’s parliamentary general elections in 2025. 

This article is part of the FREIHEIT media project on Europe’s Neighborhood, funded by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF).

Reprinted from Euractiv. You can find the original here.