Final election results announced in Moldova, Communists win

Iurie Ciocan, the secretary of Moldova?s Central Electoral Commission, announced the final results of the April 5 parliamentary polls late on Wednesday. He said that four parties had made it to the republic?s legislature. The Communists got 49.48 percent of the votes. The other three parties that won seats in parliaments are the Liberal Party, the Liberal-Democratic Party and the ?Our Moldova? alliance. The other eight parties and independent candidates failed to overcome a 7% election threshold. According to Ciocan, 1,555,557 people took part in the elections, and the turnout was 59.5 percent. After the final results are approved, the Constitutional Court will divide the outsiders? votes among the winning parties. According to preliminary vote count, the Communists will get no more than 60 mandates. Consequently, the three opposition parties will get 41 mandates altogether. There?s probability that the three opposition parties will block the election of the president who is to be elected by 61 votes. The parliament will be dissolved if the deputies fail to elect the head of state in three attempts. The outgoing president and the Communist Party leader, Vladimir Voronin, had said prior to the elections that he would name his successor after the elections. Voronin is finishing his second and last presidential term. He himself plans to become a deputy after he steps down. In the meantime, opposition protests are expected to resume in Chisinau on Thursday morning. Riots in Chisinau broke out after the opposition accused the authorities of election fraud and demanded a vote recount. Opposition protests grew into disturbances in the Moldovan capital. International observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union, the CIS and other organizations condemned the protests. They recognized the elections to be free and transparent; Kazinform cites Itar-Tass. See www.itar-tass.com for full version.