2021 Parliamentary Election Results

PAS Wins a Landslide Victory

Welcome back to Moldova Matters. This is a special short update on the Parliamentary Election Outcome. Our normal Weekly Roundup will come out this Friday.

/PAS/ Win a Landslide Victory and Parliamentary Majority

With 100% of Precincts reporting the 2021 Parliamentary Elections have ended with a landslide victory for President Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity /PAS/. Going into this election we were watching 4 main parties and blocks that had a chance to get into Parliament. Here is how they did:

First, we have to note that taking 52.8% of the vote is an all time record for a single party in Moldova. It is the single biggest electoral victory in the history of the young country and truly deserves the title “Landslide Victory.” The Block of Communists and Socialists came in second but far behind while the Shor party just squeaked above the 5% threshold in order to get into Parliament. Meanwhile, Usati performed quite poorly and was far from the 7% threshold needed for his “block” to make it to Parliament. 

As you can see from the table above, this all means that PAS far exceeded the 51 seats that it required in order to form a Government on it’s own. This means that, for the first time in over a decade, Moldova has a single party in power rather than a fractious coalition. Simply put, PAS has an electoral mandate and all the power it needs to “Let the Good Times Begin” as their campaign slogan promised. We will have to see how well they do. 

Conduct of the Elections - Free and Fair?

PromoLex, Moldova’s premier election monitoring NGO has applauded the conduct of the election noting the free and fair nature of the vote as well as the fast count. PromoLex noted that there were issues on election day, including illegal campaigning at polling places (58 cases), cases of polling places opening late (266 cases), as well as allegations and various video recordings suggesting vote buying and voter bribery. These later cases were primarily focused around voters from Transnistria. But PromoLex stressed that while there were some issues overall the election was conducted very successfully. 

The election observation mission from the Russian Federation concurred saying that the election was well run and despite some issues there are no grounds to question the results. 

High Enthusiasm, Low Turnout?

While there are celebrations in Chisinau today by PAS supporters who turned out in huge numbers to win the election, the overall election turnout was surprisingly low at just 48.41% of Registered Voters. It seems this was driven by historically low turnout in Socialist strongholds. For example, over 28,000 voters turned out in Transnistria overwhelmingly for the Socialists. But in the 2019 election there were over 37,000 voters from Transnistria. Gagauzia similarly had very low turnout, underperforming compared to other regions of the country. Finally, while Mr. Dodon had very optimistically talked about the Diaspora vote in Russia being hundreds of thousands of Moldovans, only 6,138 Moldovans in Russia voted. This compared to lines forming in Germany hours ahead of the polls opening. 

So one preliminary read on these election results was that PAS not only drove their supporters to turn out, but the Socialists failed to mobilize their electorate or worse, is losing the coherence of their coalition. 

One area with sky high turnout? Prisons. Of the eligible 6000 Moldovans locked up, around 5700 chose to vote in the election. I suppose getting to vote is more interesting than choosing not to and staying in your cell. 

What Happens Next?

Now that the election is done, how long does it take for PAS to take over Government? Well, a little while. Firstly, the Central Election Commission CEC must certify the results. They have up to 10 days to do this but may do it faster. Then the CEC sends the certified results to the Constitutional Court which, in turn, has 10 days to accept them and definitively declare the election valid. Following the Constitutional Court’s declaration, the new Parliament will meet in a Protocol Plenary Session and be officially sworn into office. Following the seating of the Parliament, the President will call the leaders of the Majority, or PAS, for consultations on forming a Government. Normally this takes some time but since the President and Parliamentary Majority are effectively of the same party, it may be very fast indeed. Following the nomination of a Prime Minister this person must form a cabinet and present themselves to Parliament for a vote of confidence. So in the shortest scenario, this could take around 25 days in order to seat both the Parliament and appoint the Executive. However, with August being a traditional recess month in Moldova it remains to be seen just how fast things will move. 

Ending on a High Note

Frankly, all of this news counts as a “high note” for anyone supporting reform, efforts to tackle corruption, and a European future in Moldova. But to pick out one specific high note, Moldova has just elected the youngest person ever to Parliament. Eugeniu Sinchevici was born in 1999 and is just 22 years old. As the leader of the PAS Youth he was very active in organizing grassroots campaigning and will now take a seat in the national legislature. We will take a deeper look at the demographics of this election in future Weekly Roundups, but one thing is clear, there is a new generation coming into power and Moldova is seeing a changing of the guard. Congrats to Eugeniu and to Moldovan voters everywhere who picked a new future. 

And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!