🇲🇩🗳⚡️ Final results of the 1st round of the 2024 Moldovan Presidential Elections.

Maia Sandu won with 42.45% of the vote, gaining 8% more compared to the 1st round in 2020. She will face off the socialist and ex-Chief prosecutor of Moldova, the ethnic Gagauz, Alexandr Stoianoglo.

Both Maia Sandu and Alexandr Stoianoglo have Romanian citizenship.

The 2nd round was scheduled on November 3rd meaning in under 2 weeks.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🇲🇩🗳🇪🇺 Moldovan fren: The latest elections in Moldova put on display the internal and arguably stupid divisions of Moldovan society

Both the pro-EU/American/Romanian side and the pro-Russia/Moldovan statehood politicians are cut from the same cloth, all having been friends at one point in the past or doing business with each other. The support bases are the same, ready to tear down each other for not supporting one side's incompetent candidate, always vengeful and always leading to the same status-quo as before.

Moldova has seen in the past 34 years many governments, ones that were arguably more Western lenient, others that were more oriented towards Russia but no one was willing to get too close to either side. Truth is that Moldova and the Moldovans, despite being indistinguishable from Romanians, other than a slight accent and the fact that almost all Moldovans are bilingual, speaking Russian and Romanian, prefer the current geopolitical situation, where Moldova has "two mother countries" and have been enjoying funding from both Bucharest and Moscow.

Although both sides like to blame each other for "stealing votes" and election fraud, there are no legitimate questions of mass manipulation of the voting process like in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections in the swing states. The referendum on joining the EU and its results portray perfectly how Moldovans feel about the EU and Russia, with one half of the country favoring closer ties with the West and the other half with the East.

Then there is the generational gap. Older generations of Moldovans favor ties with Russia and miss the days of the USSR when Moldova was a tourist destination for Russians. Younger generations, starting with the 1980s remember the poverty of the late USSR when tourism revenue in the former soviet republic dried up and the Transnistrian War, which still is fresh in the minds of most in the country as many lived through it, lost friends/relatives and its consequences play a major role in the internal politics of Moldova today.

The older generations, which are currently 55+years old, were too old to leave the country when the USSR fell and independence followed so they stood home meanwhile the younger people took the opportunity brought by the opening of the border to emigrate abroad to find work. As a result massive communities formed across Europe and North America of Moldovans who kept supporting their relatives at home by sending remittance money and have remained politically active.

PAS in Moldova today has managed to motivate them to vote to a level not seen before in Moldova's elections. Then there is also the fact that PAS nearly cancelled the elections in Russia, so the massive pro-EU vote of the diaspora is valid but only because the Russian diaspora could not vote. Only two voting sections were opened and both were in Moscow with 5k ballots each. In Romania for example, 3 sections were opened in Bucharest and they even brought additional ballots from elsewhere. This did not happen in Russia.

@CIG_telegram

🇲🇩🗳🇪🇺 One more thing that needs to be said about the referendum on joining the European Union:

The pro-Russian side sabotaged itself. Some parties including PSRM who came 2nd and PDCM told their supporters to boycott the referendum and not vote.

Our Party (PN) who came 3rd, didn't pronounce itself on the referendum leaving its supporters to vote or not as they feel like.

Only the communists and Ilan Shor's people urged their supporters to vote against joining the EU. If PSRM and PDCM and PN had told their supporters to reject the referendum, it would have been rejected.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🇦🇱🇷🇸 Albania and Serbia signed a MoC in tourism as part of the Open Balkan initiative

The agreement focuses on boosting tourism between the two countries and fostering joint projects in the sector.

@balkan_grad

🇷🇴🗳⚡️ The Constitutional Court and a slew of politicians in and outside of Romania, including many top EU officials have rallied behind the Constitutional Court's decision and accused Călin Georgescu that he manipulated people on TikTok and got more popular than he deserved.

Data shows that it is simply not true.

Data collected by the Expert Forum NGO who was one of the first and loudest accusers of ”digital manipulation” shows that Călin Georgescu came in 4th in terms of views on TikTok.

The first one was George Simion, who placed 4th in the presidential elections. He had a combined 396 million views on TikTok.

Second was Marcel Ciolacu who came third with 328 million views. The fact that Ciolacu was beaten by PSD despite having the entire political apparatus of PSD and immense administrative resources is pathetic.

After him, Elena Lasconi who came 2nd. She had 202 million views on TikTok.

Then there is Călin Georgescu himself with 145 million views and he got 1st place.

All of these views are calculated in the timeframe of January-November 2024.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🇷🇴🗳⚡️ AUR is currently collecting signatures on alegerilibere.ro for a petition to be sent to the Venice Commission, the OSCE, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw and the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) to condemn the decision of the Constitutional Court of Romania and more closely monitor the democratic process in Romania.

Over 750k signatures were collected in two days. AUR hopes to reach 1 million signatures soon.

@Wallachian_Gazette