Local elections were held in Moldova on 5 November 2023, with a runoff round for mayors held two weeks after the first round on 19 November 2023.[1] The main electoral contenders were:
In 2021, government began considering reform of administrative districts.[2] Former Prime MinisterNatalia Gavrilița (PAS) announced in 2023 that fundamental local government reform would not take place until the elections, but that "voluntary amalgamation" could be implemented, i.e. the voluntary union of several administrative-territorial units.[3]
On 19 June 2023, the Șor Party was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Moldova.[5][6] Moldovan pro-Russian fugitive oligarchIlan Shor was banned, as were other Șor Party politicians, from standing for election. In August 2023 a new party called Chance, led by journalist Alexei Lungu, was established.[7] Chance's candidates were banned from the elections only days before their first round amid claims of corrupting voters and accepting funding from Russia.[8] This resulted in a blanket ban on all 8,605 candidates nominated by the party.[9] Intelligence chief Alexandru Musteață claimed that Russia spent about a billion Moldovan lei (roughly US$55.5 million), routed through Shor, to overthrow the democratic government and destabilize Moldova, with Chance allegedly using around 10% of this sum in the prior two months to bribe voters and illegally finance the political party associated with Shor.[10]
As reported by the East StratCom Task Force's EUvsDisinfo project, for the Moldovan local elections, pro-Russian and disinformation sources attempted to discredit the pro-European authorities and candidates as well as Moldova's development partners and employed accusations of Russophobia as a tool of propaganda and disinformation.[8]Balkan Insight described the elections as dominated by Russian interference through parties funded by Shor and Vladimir Plahotniuc, another Moldovan fugitive oligarch, in the context of a "hybrid war" that Russia was said to be waging against Moldova and its pro-Western government at the time.[11] Such latter stance was held by the Moldovan authorities; the SIS published a report on 3 November which alleged that Russia sought to "influence the electoral process" through the Chance party and which Moldovan associate professor at the Oakland University Cristian Cantir stated it contained "a lot of evidence suggesting that Shor in particular has been working with the Kremlin" to undermine the elections.[12]
Amid the disinformation campaigns and the vote buying efforts by Shor-linked parties, the Moldovan authorities applied more drastic measures a few days before the elections. In late October, the Security and Intelligence Service of Moldova (SIS) blocked 22 Russian-language websites (including Interfax, Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Radio Sputnik and TASS) for spreading information from the authorities of an aggressor state (Russia) in a military conflict, followed by the suspension of six TV stations linked to Shor and Plahotniuc.[8]
Mayoral results
Electoral map depicting the results of the 2023 Moldovan local elections by each administrative unit of the country, i.e. raion.
After the first round of voting and the 273 runoff votes on 19 November:[13][14]
898 mayoral positions were contested
In Chișinău, incumbent mayor Ion Ceban was re-elected
Moldova's CEC accredited 401 international observers for the election.[18] The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was an observer organization, with 264 observers from 36 countries. Their opinion on the election was that: "The elections were calm and efficiently managed with candidates mostly able to campaign freely, but the broad powers of the government commission for exceptional situations were used to restrict freedom of speech and association as well as the right to stand, while interference from abroad and widespread allegations of vote buying throughout the campaign were of concern".[9]
The 5 November local elections were peaceful and managed efficiently, reported OSCE, but noted that interference from abroad and restrictive measures imposed due to national security concerns had a negative impact on the process.[19] Observers noted credible, persistent, and widespread allegations of the use of illegal funds for vote buying, linked to the leader of the dissolved Șor Party, and the use of foreign private sponsorship to fund local infrastructure projects in some districts, to gain votes.[9]
Post-election events
An appeal to the Chișinău Court of Appeal after the local elections by the Chance party in December 2023 led to a reversal of the ban of 600 candidates removed from the November ballot.[20] This lifting of the ban was reversed on 4 October 2023 by the Exceptional Situations Committee, which stated that any former member of the Șor party who had been charged, indicted, or under suspicion of committing criminal acts would be banned from participating in the elections.[21] The bans on 21 candidates were amended on 4 October 2023 to a prohibition on running for three years.[19]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Moldovaportal 
