The results of the repeated vote recounting in the Republic of Moldova bring no major modification to the percentage obtained by the communist left with 60 mandates, one below the needed number to have the wanted majority, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) announced.
The
Parliament will start the 17th legislature with four political parties
after the April 5 elections. The Communists Party won 49.48 percent of
ballots, the Liberal Party 13.13 percent, the Liberal Democrat Party
gained 12.43 percent and the Alliance Our Moldova 9.77 percent.
By
the algorithm of mandate distributing, the Parliament will be made up
60 Communist seats, 15 for Liberals and another 15 for Liberal
Democrats and 11 for the alliance.
Had
the Communists Party obtained 61 seats in Parliament it could have
imposed the wanted person to the presidential seat. The incumbent
president Vladimir Voronin was elected in 2001 but cannot run for a new
mandate. So far the communists failed to announce who is the candidate
they will support for the top position.
All in all, the only change after the vote recounting is a 0.01 percent drop of ballots obtained by Liberals.
The
other political parties and independent candidates failed to reach the
electoral threshold of 6 percent needed to become a member of the
Parliament. Five independent candidates and 12 political parties ran in
the April 5 elections.
The
vote recounting was required by the president as a concession to the
opposition parties which contested the fairness of the vote. Yet, the
secretary of the electoral commission, Iurie Ciocan, told Radio Free
Europe that the communists needed an extra 240 votes to get the 61
desired mandates in Parliament.
The
past weeks thousands of people protested in the Moldovan capital
against the results of the elections they labeled as “fraud” and broke
into the Parliament building. Authorities arrested hundreds of them and
took radical measures against foreign journalists in Moldova, banning
them from country. Moldovans complained the police were too aggressive
and beat the arrested people.
Weeks
before the elections took place hundreds of Romanians were stopped at
the border with the neighbor country under different pretexts, the most
absurd being the lack of papers to prove HIV negative. The Republic of
Moldova has the highest number of HIV positive people in Europe.
Romania’s
relationship with its neighbor whose majority population is Romanian
has been tensed recently. In the past years, relationships have had a
seesawing evolution, going from friendly drinks the two chief of states
had, to allegations Romania wants back the Moldovan territory.
