Moldovan opposition candidate Maia Sandu is on course to become the eastern European nation’s first female president after a scoring a landslide victory in Sunday’s presidential election.
With 99.9 per cent of votes counted, Ms Sandu, a pro-western former World Bank economist who briefly served as prime minister last year, was on Monday on course for 57.74 per cent of the vote. Igor Dodon, the Russia-backed incumbent, was on course for 42.26 per cent.
Speaking shortly after polls closed on Sunday night, Ms Sandu pledged to end Moldova’s divisions and step up the fight against the corruption that has long bedevilled the 3.5m-strong former Soviet state.
“We have a lot of work to do to deliver on what we have promised. We will build step by step the country we promised,” she said. “The first task is to unite society . . . [including both] those who voted today and those who did not go to the polls.”
Mr Dodon thanked those who had voted for him and urged Moldovans “to stay calm, regardless of the election results”.
The face-off between the pro-European Ms Sandu and the pro-Russian Mr Dodon is the second election in a row that the pair have duelled over the presidency. It is also the latest instalment of the bigger struggle over Moldova’s geopolitical orientation that has left deep rifts in the country’s politics since it won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
While Ms Sandu received messages of support from senior European figures, such as the head of the European People’s party Donald Tusk, the Kremlin made its preference for Mr Dodon clear. In the run-up to the election Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, also accused the US of preparing a “revolutionary scenario” in Moldova.
While Ms Sandu’s victory is a blow to Moscow’s influence in the country, Mr Dodon’s pro-Russian Party of Socialists (PSRM) controls the country’s parliament and election results over the past decade have shown no stable majority in favour of deeper European integration.
The Kremlin moved quickly on Monday to congratulate Ms Sandu, with president Vladimir Putin saying he expected her to promote “constructive development of relations” between the two countries.
Her election “will motivate Moscow to take a more pragmatic attitude to Chisinau,” wrote Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
Pre-election opinion polls had suggested a neck-and-neck race, but in the event Ms Sandu scored a convincing win, helped on by a surge of votes from the country’s huge diaspora, which turned out in huge numbers for the 48-year-old.
Preliminary results suggested that she won more than 940,000 votes, more than any other presidential candidate in the country’s independent history.
Once confirmed, the result will cap a remarkable comeback for Ms Sandu, who briefly served as prime minister last year after her ACUM party formed an unlikely alliance in parliament with Mr Dodon’s Socialists to oust the Democratic party of oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc.
However, the coalition between the two groups collapsed after just five months following a battle over how to appoint the prosecutor-general — a crucial appointment for Ms Sandu, who had made fighting corruption one of the cornerstones of her political platform.
Analysts expect that Ms Sandu will follow up her presidential victory by calling snap parliamentary elections and seek the majority she needs to continue her attempts at reform.
Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Warsaw
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Pro-EU Maia Sandu on course to be Moldova’s president - Financial Times
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