A candidate backed by the traditionally pro-Russian Socialist Party of Moldova, Aleksandar Stojanoglo, won a slight lead in the country's presidential election on Sunday, according to preliminary results after 87% of votes were counted, Reuters reports.
The results show that Stojanoglo, a former prosecutor general, has 51,2%, but the votes of the Moldovan diaspora – who favored incumbent President Maja Sanda in the first round – have not yet been counted.
Vlad Kulminski, a Chisinau-based political analyst, told Reuters he believed early results showed Sandu had won the election. Neither Sandu nor Stojanoglo commented on the results.
The turnout was higher than in the first round, reports Beta.
1,68 million people voted today, which is 54 percent of the population, according to data from the Central Election Commission. A record number of voters, around 315.000, voted in the diaspora as well.
The Moldovan police announced today that they have significant evidence of the organized transportation of voters, illegal according to the country's election law, to polling stations from within the country and abroad. They added that they are investigating and registering evidence related to air traffic activities from Russia to Belarus, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
"Such measures are taken to protect the integrity of the electoral process and to ensure that every citizen votes freely without undue pressure or influence," the police said.
In the first round, the current pro-Western president, Maja Sandu, received 42 percent of the vote, but failed to win a majority.
As with the EU referendum, a poll published this Sunday by the research company "iData" points to a close race with a likely victory for Sandu, an outcome that could rely on the large Moldovan diaspora.
The president in Moldova has significant powers in areas such as foreign policy and national security, and the mandate lasts for four years.
Moldova's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced this evening that polling stations in Frankfurt, Germany, and Liverpool and Northampton, Great Britain, were targeted by false bomb threats, with the aim of stopping the voting process.
Maja Sandu's National Security Adviser Stanislav Secrieru wrote on the X social network that Russia's interference in the Moldovan election process has been noticed, which has great potential to distort the outcome of the vote.
He later added that the state's electoral roll systems were the target of "coordinated cyber attacks" to disrupt links between domestic polling stations and those abroad.
Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said people across the country had received anonymous death threats via phone calls in what he said was an extreme attack to scare voters.
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