Moldova is voting in crucial parliamentary elections that will determine the country's future.
Sunday's general election will be the most crucial since Moldova gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia is doing all it can to divert the country from its European course.
If a flood of videos on TikTok is to be believed, the people of Moldova are currently living through a reign of terror.
These short videos claim that the country is being governed by a "dictatorship" of its pro-European President, Maia Sandu, and the ruling liberal-conservative Action and Solidarity Party (PAS).
They also allege that this "puppet regime" has sold itself to the EU and NATO and US billionaire George Soros with a view to destroying Moldova's agriculture, "introducing LGBTQ ideology" and leading the country into a war against the Russian Federation.
One of the people who posts such things on TikTok almost daily is former President Igor Dodon, a devoted follower of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Dodon is leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) and head of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc alliance. The logo of the alliance features a red-and-white star surrounding a heart with the Soviet hammer and sickle at its center.
Dodon describes himself as right-wing and committed to "traditional values," closing his videos with the Orthodox Christian salutation "God help us!"
This blend of hatred of Europe and the West, Soviet nostalgia, loyalty to the Kremlin, Orthodox Christian piety and right-wing populism appeals to a large part of Moldovan society, particularly in view of the precarious economic situation of many people in the country, especially pensioners.
On Sunday, Moldovans go to the polls to elect a new parliament. This will be the first scheduled general election since Moldova and Ukraine were granted candidate status by the EU in 20
For months now, the poll has been seen as a pivotal election and one that could take the country either further along the road to the EU or back to Russia.
Opinion polls in the country are considered notoriously unreliable. The unpredictability of the vote is further compounded by the fact that almost half of all voters have still not made up their mind who they are going to vote for.
Even though Sandu's liberal-conservative, pro-European, anti-corruption civil rights party PAS is expected to remain the strongest party, it might lose the absolute majority it got in 2021.
Two other electoral alliances that opinion polls indicate will be represented in the new parliament are both clearly pro-Russian.
These are the Patriotic Electoral Bloc and the political alliance known as Alternative, which was founded by Mayor of Chisinau, Ion Ceban.
Our Party (PN) is another party that could enter parliament. It was founded by businessman Renato Usatii, a political adventurer and populist who made his fortune in Russia and is hard to pin down politically.
Usatii could end up holding the balance of power and determining whether the country keeps its pro-European government or gets a pro-Russian one.
Russia is doing everything it can to sway the election in its favour.
One way of doing so is the buying of votes via app. Last year, up to 300,000 voters registered for the app. At the time, the Moldovan government spoke of an "unprecedented hybrid attack" on the country.
The buying of votes is coordinated by a network run by the Moldovan-Israeli businessman Ilan Shor, who is commissioned by people in the Russian secret services and, ultimately, the Kremlin.
Shor was the mastermind behind what is known in Moldova as the "theft of the century," where a billion dollars was stolen from Moldova's banking system by means of complex lending structure between 2012 and 2014.
Sentenced to 15 years in prison in Moldova, Shor fled first to Israel in 2019 and later to Russia. Several parties, which he founded specially for this election, have been banned.
For months now, the Moldovan police have been warning citizens not to get mixed up in vote-buying. Unfortunately, however, they don't seem to have been very successful. Raids against people involved in electoral fraud and coordinating the vote-buying scheme and arrests are being made across the country almost every day.
source:commonspace.eu with Deutche Welle (Cologne)
photo: Opposition n posters in Moldova's elections.
