The results of the general elections in Moldova on July 29 were not so much a defeat for the ruling Communist party, rather more of a rejection of outgoing president Vladimir Voronin and the model he imposed on Moldovan politics.

Inasmuch as Voronin controls the party, tolerating no internal dissent and allowing no cracks to show for outside observers, the loss of 12 seats in the legislature within less than four months reflects growing discontent with the president’s persona and policies.

The Communist party still won the snap elections on July 29, the final results giving the party 44.7 per cent of the vote and 48 seats in the 101-seat legislature. But compared to the 60 seats it won at the scheduled elections in April, when it was just one seat short of the majority needed to elect the country’s next president, observers have qualified the results as a serious setback.

Not that the Communists see themselves as defeated, although Voronin has said he was ready to take the party into opposition if it found no willing coalition partners. "In case there is a liberal right-wing coalition with the participation of extremist radical forces, the Communist Party will be forced to announce that it will go into constructive opposition," Voronin said on August 5, as quoted by news agency Infotag.

"There is no other way for the party to oppose the scenario of destroying the economy, the social fabric and the statehood of the Republic of Moldova," he said.
The target of his ire was the Liberal Party, which won 15 seats at the Parliament elections. Voronin has repeatedly accused the Liberals of extremism and blamed it as the main culprit of the April 7 riots in the capital Chisinau.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly youths, joined the rally in front of Moldova’s parliament and presidency buildings to protest against the outcome of the general election two days earlier, which gave the ruling Communists about 50 per cent of the vote. The opposition parties claimed at the time that the ruling party rigged the elections in its favour. The violent clashes saw police withdraw and leave the parliament and presidency buildings to protesters, who burned furniture and left anti-Communist graffiti on the walls.

The three opposition parties that spearheaded the calls for a vote recount – the Liberal-Democrats, the Liberals and the Moldova Noastra Alliance – are now joined in Parliament by the Democratic Party.

The Democrats’ result was boosted by the new party leader, Marian Lupu, the Communist speaker in the previous legislature, who left the Communist party over the way it handled protest rallies in the wake of the April elections.

It was the second major defection from Communist ranks in a little more than a year, but unlike former prime minister Vasile Tarlev, who never managed to step out of Voronin’s shadow, Lupu’s name alone put the Democrats into parliament with 13 MPs.

What next?

The four opposition parties said on July 30 that they were in talks about forming a new government, which would require 52 votes to be confirmed by parliament. The four parties have 53 MPs.

But before parliament can consider the issue, it needs to elect a new president, who then would nominate a prime minister. Presidential nominees need to win 61 votes in parliament, which would require at least partial support from Communist MPs. Unless a deal with Communists is reached, the party could decide to block the presidential election, as the three opposition parties did in the wake of the April riots.

In that case, new snap elections will have to be called, but no sooner than next year, since Moldova’s elections law allows only one early election a year. In the meantime, an interim government would have to be appointed by Voronin, who would stay on until a new president is elected.

Voronin holds the keys to the next government and has already made it clear that the Communists would not back any coalition formula that includes the Liberals. Despite Voronin’s dislike for Lupu – the outgoing president said he regretted promoting Lupu as speaker of parliament – a coalition with the Democrats is not impossible. Lupu himself has said repeatedly his party will focus on coalition talks with other opposition parties and that he would not enter a narrow coalition with the Communists alone as his partner.
Speculation in Moldovan media suggested that one way for the opposition parties to secure Communist support for the presidential vote and avoid another round of early elections would be to offer Voronin an informal immunity from prosecution in return for his withdrawal from politics. The precedent was set when Boris Yeltsin stepped down as Russian president in 1999 and then when Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze did the same in 2003 after the "rose revolution", newspaper Jurnal de Chisinau said.

Just how open Voronin, who has strengthened his control over the Communist party and the party’s control of the public administration during the eight years of his presidency, will be, remains unclear. Although Moldova is constitutionally a parliamentary republic, Voronin’s tight reins on his party have resulted in the imposition of a presidential republic model.

Another option would be for the Communists and the opposition to settle on a consensus nomination of an apolitical figure, but that would most likely result in a coalition government by the four opposition parties and with Voronin deprived of any levers to influence policy, which the incumbent president is unlikely to accept.