MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th July, 2021) Moldova is set to hold an early parliamentary election on Sunday, which is expected to be a showdown between the electoral alliance of Communists and Socialists and the Party of Action and Solidarity, affiliated with President Maia Sandu.
In April, Sandu dissolved the country's parliament as it failed to approve a new cabinet in the wake of former Prime Minister Ion Chicu resigning in December last year. The move was fraught with controversy and required a go-ahead from the Moldovan Constitutional Court.
The Eastern European country has a proportional electoral system, with candidates entering the legislature through party lists.
Moldova has 3.28 million eligible voters, including approximately 259,000 in the breakaway region of Transnistria.
The country will open its polling stations at 7 a.m. local time (04:00 GMT). The election will be monitored by some 1,800 local observers and over 600 international ones.
The electoral threshold is 5% for parties and 7% for electoral blocs. The election results will be considered valid if at least one-third of the voters come to the polls. In order to form a government, a party must either win at least 51 seats in the 101-seat parliament or form a coalition with enough seats.
After the vote, the country's electoral commission must present a list of elected lawmakers to the Constitutional Court, which, in turn, must validate the results within five days.
The Moldovan Central Electoral Commission allowed 53 parties to vie for the seats in the legislature. However, some of theparties decided against going it alone.
Moldova's Communist and Socialist parties joined forces as the bloc of Communists and Socialists. The right-wing Our Party and the Motherland party formed the Renato Usatii bloc, named after the Our Party leader. Meanwhile, the Save Bessarabia Union, the Liberal Party and the Romanian Popular Party joined the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which was created this year. All in all, there are 22 parties and electoral blocs on the ballot this time.
However, the main fight of this election is expected to be between the Party of Action and Solidarity and the alliance of Socialists and Communists, with the former advocating further integration with the European Union and aligning with the United States, while the latter wants the country to strengthen its ties with Russia and China.
According to the Association of Sociologists and Demographers, the Party of Action and Solidarity has the support of 37.4% of the population, while the leftist electoral alliance is right behind it with 37.1%. This points to a potentially close race, with the winner.
With only a day to go before the election, Moldova's Supreme Court of Justice overturned the decision that closed 29 polling places for residents of Transnistria.
"An important ruling: able to keep all 41 polling places for our fellow citizens who live in Transnistria! Moldova's Supreme Court of Justice has just cancelled the decision of the court of appeal dated July 8 about the closure of 29 stations out of the planned 41," Igor Dodon, who leads the Party of Socialists, said on Telegram.
The Central Election Commission initially decided to open 44 polling places for Transnistrians. The decision was contested, and a court asked the commission to cut the number of stations to 41. The court of appeal in Chisinau asked the commission to further reduce the number of stations to 12. The commission, however, contested this ruling in the supreme court.
