While most eyes have been on the crucial US election this week, European leaders will nevertheless be breathing a little easier after Sunday’s second round of the Moldovan presidential elections, which returned the pro-EU incumbent, Maia Sandu.
However, the outcome of Georgian parliamentary elections from the previous week was less heartening, nominally returning the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party to a parliamentary majority.
But those results – with Georgian Dream receiving 54 per cent of the vote – were deeply contested and barely believable. According to the most independent polling agencies, they were characterised by “statistically unexplainable discrepancies” amounting to between 8 and 13 per cent of the total vote.
Elections in both countries have implications for the European Union, NATO and support for Ukraine, with Georgia – if the results stand – likely shifting closer to President Putin’s Russia and Moldova further solidifying its path to eventual EU membership. Maia Sandu has also been a strong supporter of Ukraine and her victory was welcomed by its president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russian election meddling in both countries has been extensive, with a comprehensive vote-buying scheme and what Germany called “a massive, coordinated attempt” to prevent Moldova’s large ex-pat community from voting. Polling stations for Moldovans in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern and Berlin in Germany, and Liverpool and Northampton in the United Kingdom, were targeted by bomb threats in an attempt to disrupt voting.
Moldova’s ex-pat community makes up approximately one-third of Moldova’s eligible voters, with many based in Western Europe. With access to multilingual independent media, those voters are predominantly pro-EU – with 82 per cent voting for Sandu – and since they are counted last, resulted in strong late swings in the vote counting. Although Sandu won comfortably in the end, with 55.35 per cent of the vote, she was trailing early on and received fewer votes than her opponent in Moldova itself, with the diaspora votes sending her over the line.
Elections in both Georgia and Moldova had Russian-backed vote-buying, intimidation and other interference, but the difference in the outcomes demonstrates the importance of keeping pro-Russian or pro-Putin parties from power.
In a referendum to add EU membership aspiration to Moldova’s Constitution, which was held on 20 October along with the first round of presidential elections, the proposal just squeaked through, taking the lead for the first time with around 97.5 per cent of the votes counted. The referendum eventually passed with 50.46 per cent of the vote, but clearly Russia’s vote-buying, intimidation and propaganda within Moldova had an impact.
The southern autonomous region of Gagauzia voted strongly for Sandu’s pro-Russian opponent, Alexandr Stoianoglo, as did the contested region of Transnistria, which has been recognised by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as Moldovan territory occupied by Russia.
Georgia also has separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were occupied by Russian troops following an invasion in 2008. This invasion, and the lack of adequate response from Europe and the United States, set the pre-conditions for Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Unfortunately, since that full invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s accomplices in neighbouring countries have clearly been given the green light to “steal” elections. The International Election Observation Mission, with observers from the European Parliament and other parliamentary assemblies, released a report on Georgia’s election, reporting incidents of physical altercations, widespread intimidation of voters, voter secrecy potentially compromised in a quarter of observations, and concerns about voters’ ability to cast their vote without fear of retribution.
Elections in both Georgia and Moldova had Russian-backed vote-buying, intimidation and other interference, but the difference in the outcomes demonstrates the importance of keeping pro-Russian or pro-Putin parties from power. Once in power, they are more than likely to subvert democratic processes and undermine free elections, meaning the chances of returning to more democratic rule, and the path to EU membership, are all but extinguished.
Georgia was granted EU candidate status in December last year as an encouragement to undertake democratic reforms. However, in May the Georgian Dream-dominated legislature passed an anti-democratic “foreign agents” law and last month passed a similarly Putinesque “anti-LGBTQ+” law. Due to these and other policies, the EU effectively halted accession talks with Georgia with an EU report released last week documenting the country’s democratic backsliding.
Polls tend to show that popular support for joining the EU remains very high at around 80 per cent or more. How do we reconcile this support for the EU with 54 per cent of the electorate supposedly voting for a pro-Russian party? We know that polls can be wrong, but it seems incomprehensible that Georgian Dream’s support actually increased by more than five per cent from the results of the 2020 election, which was itself contested.
The Georgian people will likely rise up in protest against the result, as they did in 2020, but since that election Putin has been emboldened and sees little political cost in undermining elections. Georgia is not Russia, and there is a chance that there will be protests on such a scale that they cannot be ignored, but Putin knows – as do the leaders of Europe – what is at stake. He will not allow a pro-EU government on Russia’s doorstep if he can help it.
The results in Georgia demonstrate the degradation of democracy and elections that occurs once pro-Russian parties are in power, which makes the re-election of a pro-EU president in Moldova – sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, a NATO and EU member – all the more crucial.
