The October 20 local elections came with several surprises. The Democratic Party (PDM), which lost its leader Vlad Plahotniuc this summer, ended up breaking a record. 

The PDM came out with the largest number of mayors elected in the first round – 192 in total. This number is also 47 higher than in the previous elections in 2015. The PDM also obtained 20 percent of the seats on the district councils and 175 of their candidates for the mayoralty are up for election in the second round. The Socialist Party (PSRM) is next in the ranking with 124 mayors and the ACUM Bloc follows with 82. 

Only four months ago, the Democratic Party was ousted from government, accused of usurping state power, corruption and political banditry. Their leader, Vlad Plahotniuc fled the country in order to avoid the fate of imprisoned former prime minister, Vlad Filat. While at that point, the Parliament was debating banning the PDM from politics, instead of disappearing from the preferences of the electorate, they came out victorious in the local elections with the greatest number of elected mayors in the first round. 

Similarly, in Bălți, the notorious Renato Usatîi, an alleged agent of the Russian secret services, won a second term at the town hall from the first round of elections, with 64 percent of the votes. He was elected despite the fact that he left Bălți halfway through his first term and fled to Russia. 

Following the same trend, Pavel Verejanu, succeeded Ilan Shor (the main culprit accused in the stolen billion case) as mayor of Orhei with over 78 percent of the vote. This electoral success is reminiscent of Shor’s victory in 2015 with a sentence of seven and a half years in prison in the background.

The people of Orhei’s vote is not political, the underlying meaning of this vote is a social one. Let us recall Shor’s electoral program in the last elections: he would transform Orhei into a Monaco, a kind of social haven. With stolen money.

The thing is that in Orhei, people were less interested in where the money comes from. For them it mattered that Shor would bring this money to Orhei, to build roads, recreational areas, playgrounds for children – and Verejanu probably bought their votes with similar promises.

Another record was hit in Comrat, the mayor, the Socialist deputy Sergei Atanasov, registered the highest electoral score in the country  – over 94 percent. 

However, in this autonomous region of Moldova, Gagauzia, elections often break the law, using fake ID cards and multiple voting. This practice is borrowed from regions controlled by Russia such as Transnistria, Crimea, Donbas that have experienced record breaking results and victories in elections and referendums. 

Also, in Comrat, just as in Bălți, Chișinău, Tighina, Taraclia and other urban areas of Moldova, the vote is predominantly geopolitical, the results varying depending on the ethnic component of the localities. The North is more pro-East, the South – more pro-Romanian and pro-West, the Center is 60/40 pro-Western. It has always been like that. Moldova, located at the crossroads of East and West, cannot exist outside geopolitics.

All of Igor Dodon’s calls to his governing partners, “to make politics without geopolitics,” are pure aberrations. The Russians and pro-Russians voted for Dodon as president in 2016 and not Maia Sandu, not because Dodon is better, but because Dodon has sided with Putin. And this is what brought the Socialists to Parliament in February 2019. 

The socialist electorate voted for Deputy Ion Ceban in Chișinău on Sunday for the same reasons as the pro-Western citizens voted for Andrei Năstase. Moldova lives in two parallel worlds and Moldovan politics cannot exist outside of these worlds. The geopolitical vote is essential for Moldova, especially when there is a great crisis of political leaders.

Geopolitcs made Dodon, Năstase and all others become leaders.

Maia Sandu was right when she said that the last elections were different from the ones under the Plahotniuc regime, because “people were not forced to vote, they were not paid, blackmailed, threatened into voting a certain way, there were no more buses full of people, the public institutions were not used in the campaign, there was practically no attempts to corrupt the electorate.” 

Yet, with all this freedom, the turnout was significantly lower than in 2015 both in Chișinău – the main electoral front – (36 percent compared to 47 percent) and nationally (42 percent compared to 49 percent ). Although power has changed, the electorate’s preferences remain, for the moment, unchanged: the Socialist Party, the ACUM Bloc and the Democratic Party. 

The attempts of new political formations to make their way to power (such as the Romanian People’s Party, the Union Save Basarabia and the Party of National Unity) were unsuccessful, as were the attempts of some older parties that have gone through several political downturns (such as the Liberal Party and the Liberal-Democratic Party). 

As it gets ready to head into presidential elections next year, Moldova needs new political forces and new names in politics. For now, the second round of local elections on November 3 will be important in shaping the political spectrum. 

Each town and village hall is important, but the main battle will be for Chișinău between Andrei Năstase of the ACUM Bloc and Ion Ceban (PSRM). If Năstase negotiates for the support of other parties on the right side of the political spectrum, he can accumulate another 19-20 percent of the votes in addition to his 31 percent obtained in the first round. Ion Ceban, who gained 40 percent in the first round, can only tap into an additional 8 percent from the left side of the political spectrum. The odds are still on Năstase’s side, but much depends on how he will “play” in the second round as well as on who he decides to “play” with.

Petru Grozavu