[RSS] Here’s what you need to notice about Moldova’s bans, blacklists, and last-minute rule changes

[RSS]

Moldova voted on Sunday, but opposition parties were erased, leaders detained, and international monitors shut out

Moldova went to the polls on Sunday in what officials in Chisinau and Brussels have called a “milestone on the European path.” Yet with opposition parties banned, observers blocked, and voters in key regions sidelined, the election is being described less as a democratic contest and more like an attempt at forced pro-EU outcome.
Moldova bans opposition party days before key vote
Elections are meant to let citizens decide. In Moldova, key players were simply removed from the ballot.

• On September 26, two days before the election, the Heart of Moldova party was suspended for 12 months by court order, accused of money laundering and illicit campaign finance. The CEC struck all Heart of Moldova candidates from the Patriotic Bloc’s list. Its leader, former Gagauzia governor Irina Vlah, called it “a political spectacle.”

 • The same day, the CEC barred the Great Moldova party, led by Victoria Furtuna, citing undeclared foreign funding and links to the already banned SOR party. Furtuna had already been sanctioned by the EU in July for receiving support from fugitive oligarch Ilan Șor.

 • In June 2023, the SOR Party itself, led by exiled businessman Ilan Shor, was dissolved by the Constitutional Court, accused of corruption and “threatening Moldova’s sovereignty.” Pro-EU Moldovan President Maia Sandu celebrated the ban as a victory against “a party created out of corruption and for corruption.” Opposition leaders called it the end of pluralism.

The bans came on top of sweeping new laws rushed through parliament this summer, allowing the government to strike “successor parties” of banned groups from the ballot and to bar their members from holding office for five years. The Venice Commission and OSCE warned such blanket exclusions could violate basic political rights.


EU candidate conducts mass arrests citing ‘Russian influence’
Days before the election, the CEC even relocated four of those sites further inland, citing security threats. The Interior Ministry warned of possible bomb scares and provocations in the “security zone.”

Critics call it voter suppression. Russia’s ambassador Oleg Ozerov described the changes as “unprecedented,” noting they were announced less than 48 hours before election day. Transnistrian authorities accused Chisinau of deliberately reducing turnout in a region that leans heavily toward opposition parties.

By contrast, more than 300 polling stations were opened abroad, including 73 in Italy, where the Moldovan diaspora numbers some 100,000, and only 2 in Russia, where up to half-a-million immigrants from the EU candidate country reside, according to the interior ministry in Moscow – a disparity that hints at the government’s priorities.
READ MORE: International lawyers highlight the persecution of the leader of Gagauzia in Moldova
But inside Moldova, the picture looks different: courts have been turned into campaign tools, whole parties have been erased, governors jailed, observers turned away. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has called for an “inclusive and fair” process for all citizens – diplomatic language for “don’t tilt the table.” The Venice Commission cautioned against blanket bans that undermine the right to be elected.



The bottom line

The vote was supposed to be about Moldova’s future, yet so much of the present has been quietly erased. The rivals that could have challenged PAS are gone, some behind bars, some in exile. The voters in Transnistria who might have shifted the balance face fewer polling stations than ever before, and hundreds of thousands of Moldovan diaspora were denied an opportunity to vote. Even the observers whose job is to watch have been turned away. 

Deeply-set political cleavages along ethnic and linguistic lines are only likely to deepen.


Source: https://www.rt.com/news/625370-how-run- ... mpaign=RSS