The leader of the National Alternative Movement (MAN) Ion Ceban said that according to the preliminary results, their party won the elections in Chisinau. He noted that attempts were made to rig the elections and the vote count was the longest one among the elections held the last few years, IPN reports.

“I sincerely thank all the inhabitants in my name and in the name of the team. We witnessed manipulation, cheating and a lot of attempts to rig the elections in favor of the ruling party. According to our calculations, at least 51% of the votes cast in the municipality should be for the mayor general and 34% – for the MAN’s candidates for the CMC. We will publish all the voting reports. We continue working at this hour,” Ion Ceban stated on Monday morning.

The preliminary results on the website of the Central Election Commission started to be published after 9 p.m. and a number of pauses were seen between updates, even of an hour. The preliminary data published at 6 a.m show that Ion Ceban gained 50.65% of the vote in the mayoral election, while the Party of Action and Solidarity’s candidate Lilian Carp obtained 28.20% of the poll.

Under the Electoral Code, if none of the candidates gains more than half of the valid votes cast, a runoff vote involving the two candidates with the highest number of votes in the first round voting is held in two weeks. The runoff vote is won by the candidate who obtains the largest number of votes.