Maia Sandu wins second term in pivotal Moldovan presidential election run-off

Moldova’s pro-Western incumbent president, Maia Sandu, has won a second term in office after a pivotal run-off on Sunday in an election widely seen as a referendum on whether the country’s political future lies with Europe or Russia.

With 99.86% of ballots counted as of Monday morning, Sandu, who leads the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity, was named the winner with 55.41% of the vote, beating Kremlin-friendly Party of Socialists candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo, who took 44.59%, Moldova’s Central Election Commission said.

While Stoianoglo won a majority of votes within Moldova itself — 51.19% compared to Sandu’s 48.81%, including overwhelming majorities in the Russian-influenced regions of Transnistria and Gagauzia — Sandu performed strongly in the capital Chișinău and claimed over 80% of votes cast by Moldovans living abroad.

In her victory speech at her party’s headquarters in Chișinău after the preliminary results were announced, Sandu praised Moldovans for having given a “lesson of democracy worth being written in the textbooks of history” in the face of alleged Russian interference in the election, which she called an “unprecedented attack in the history of Europe”.

Moldovans had shown that “united, we manage to defeat those who wanted to subdue us” by voting for a European future, Sandu said, adding that pro-Russian forces had sought to influence the outcome of the election through “dirty money, illegal purchasing of votes, involvement in the electoral processes of hostile forces from abroad and of crime rings, lies [and] inducing of hatred and fear in our society”.

Stoianoglo, meanwhile, called on citizens to respect the election result and unite to “put an end to the hatred and division imposed on us”.

“The future of this country has no room for absurd fights, but only for unity and mutual respect”, Stoianoglo stressed.

According to independent Moldovan news outlet NewsMaker, the Central Election Commission recorded a total of 126 electoral violations on Sunday, including 18 cases of vote buying and 12 of the organised transfer of voters to polling stations, with police investigating what they called “reasonable indications” of Moldovan citizens being flown on chartered flights from Russia to vote at polling stations in Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The election went to a run-off between Sandu and Stoianoglo following the first round on 20 October, in which Sandu was victorious but fell short of the 50% required to avoid a second round.

During that vote, both Sandu and the EU made allegations of widespread electoral fraud and “unprecedented” levels of interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies in the election campaign.