For the first time in the history of local elections in Chisinau, both candidates who have gained access to the second round of local elections represent the parties in power. For this reason, their responsibility is much greater. This is the opinion of political consultant Igor Volnitchi. According to him, the stability of the governing coalition depends largely on the performance of the candidates in the second round for the capital's mayoralty, IPN reports.
"For me, these elections are also important as trigger for subsequent political events. I believe that the stability of the governing coalition depends largely on the performance of the candidates in the second round for the capital's mayoralty,” said Igor Volnitchi on " Time of Expertise "program on Jurnal TV.
According to Igor Volnitchi, the local elections campaign was quite interesting, taking into consideration both the election day and the results. Igor Volnitchi says he was interested in the turnout fluctuations. At the same time, the political consultant considers that the second round in the capital will be much more intense. "As a rule, in Chisinau, the second round is strongly influenced by political and geopolitical choice. As for the first round, last year too, I noticed citizens’ interest in professionalism, offers, professional visions”, argued Volnițchi.
Alexei Busuioc, vice-chairman of the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM), says the statistics show that in each local ballot about 30% of the mayors are replaced by new ones, the other 70% remaining the same. Furthermore, Alexei Busuioc says that there are some signals that even now the method of opening cases against mayors would be applied to force them to join one party or another, as it happened during the previous government. "I hope that this will not happen again, although there are some signals from the territory, from the mayors’ offices," said CALM vice-chairman.
Former city councillor Oleg Cernei is of the opinion that this campaign for the local elections was a novel one because administrative resources have not been used, no coaches were observed with ministers and civil servants who had been involved in the campaign. This eliminated administrative pressure. "I participated in seven electoral campaigns for Chisinau and it is for the first time that there are so many electoral contenders competing for the capital mayoralty. So, there were electoral offers, electoral promises. I think the political intrigue was missing because in 2018 Vladimir Plahotniuc was the subject of the election campaign. Now, the message for the electorate had to be infrastructure, urban development, neighbourhood development, suburbs. It was a technical campaign”, Cernei said.
Deputy Parliament Speaker Alexandru Slusari believes that on November 3, when the second round of elections will be held in Chisinau, the will of the citizens will be reconfirmed and the candidate of the ACUM bloc, Andrei Năstase, will become mayor of the capital. "All the calculations and all the political circumstances point to this and I have no doubt that Andrei Năstase will become mayor general on November 3," said the MP.
According to him, the citizens were accustomed to the fact that the atmosphere on election day was usually very tense, which is why it seemed monotonous to some. "Somehow we got used to the evil, to the atmosphere that the regime would rig the elections and somehow we became hostages of this syndrome. Yesterday, all the contenders, from the opposition and from the government, said that the elections were, with certain irregularities, free and fair. In a way, for many analysts that was boring, "said Slusari.
To the second round of the elections for the position of capital’s mayor, the PSRM candidate, Ion Ceban, got through with 40.19% of the voters’ ballots, while the representative of the ACUM bloc, Andrei Năstase, with 31.08% of the votes.