2023 Moldovan local elections

Local elections were held in Moldova on 5 November 2023, with a runoff round for mayors held two weeks after the first round on 19 November 2023.^[1] The main electoral contenders were:

• The incumbent government, the pro-European, Atlanticist, centre-right, and liberal Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS).
• Opposition from the left-wing, socially conservative, and pro-Russian Bloc of Communists and Socialists (BECS), comprising the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), and Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM).

The elections were organized by the incumbent Recean Cabinet. Overall, the PAS won the most votes in the elections.

In 2019, the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) won 17 out of 32 administrative districts, as per the electoral results of the previous Moldovan local elections, which were held in 2019. Following that 2019 election, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) controlled a single district, won as part of the ACUM political alliance with the Dignity and Truth Platform (PPDA), the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM), and the National Unity Party (PUN).

In 2021, government began considering reform of administrative districts.^[2] Former Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița (PAS) announced in 2023 that fundamental local government reform would not take place until the elections, but that "voluntary amalgamation" could be implemented, i.e. the voluntary union of several administrative-territorial units.^[3]

In February 2023, there were allegations of a Russian-backed attempted coup in Moldova.^[4]

On 19 June 2023, the Șor Party was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Moldova.^[5][6] Moldovan pro-Russian fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor was banned, as were other Șor Party politicians, from standing for election for five years.^[7] In August 2023, former journalist Alexei Lungu became the leader of Chance, a party that affiliated with Shor.^[8] Chance's candidates were banned from the elections only days before their first round amid claims of corrupting voters and accepting funding from Russia.^[9] This resulted in a blanket ban on all 8,605 candidates nominated by the party.^[10] Intelligence chief Alexandru Musteață claimed that Russia spent about a billion Moldovan lei (roughly US$55.5 million), routed through Shor, to overthrow the democratic government and destabilize Moldova, with Chance allegedly using around 10% of this sum in the prior two months to bribe voters and illegally finance the political party associated with Shor.^[11]

As reported by the East StratCom Task Force's EUvsDisinfo project, for the Moldovan local elections, pro-Russian and disinformation sources attempted to discredit the pro-European authorities and candidates as well as Moldova's development partners and employed accusations of Russophobia as a tool of propaganda and disinformation.^[9] Balkan Insight described the elections as dominated by Russian interference through parties funded by Shor and Vladimir Plahotniuc, another Moldovan fugitive oligarch, in the context of a "hybrid war" that Russia was said to be waging against Moldova and its pro-Western government at the time.^[12] Such latter stance was held by the Moldovan authorities; the SIS published a report on 3 November which alleged that Russia sought to "influence the electoral process" through the Chance party and which Moldovan associate professor at the Oakland University Cristian Cantir stated it contained "a lot of evidence suggesting that Shor in particular has been working with the Kremlin" to undermine the elections.^[13]

Amid the disinformation campaigns and the vote buying efforts by Shor-linked parties, the Moldovan authorities applied more drastic measures a few days before the elections. In late October, the Security and Intelligence Service of Moldova (SIS) blocked 22 Russian-language websites (including Interfax, Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Radio Sputnik and TASS) for spreading information from the authorities of an aggressor state (Russia) in a military conflict, followed by the suspension of six TV stations linked to Shor and Plahotniuc.^[9]

After the first round of voting and the 273 runoff votes on 19 November:^[14][15]

• 898 mayoral positions were contested
• In Chișinău, incumbent mayor Ion Ceban was re-elected
• Bălți went to Alexandr Petkov

On 22 November 2023, the Central Electoral Commission of Moldova (CEC) ruled three settlements would hold new elections in May 2024.^[17]

Moldova's CEC accredited 401 international observers for the election.^[19] The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was an observer organization, with 264 observers from 36 countries. Their opinion on the election was that: "The elections were calm and efficiently managed with candidates mostly able to campaign freely, but the broad powers of the government commission for exceptional situations were used to restrict freedom of speech and association as well as the right to stand, while interference from abroad and widespread allegations of vote buying throughout the campaign were of concern".^[10]

The 5 November local elections were peaceful and managed efficiently, reported OSCE, but noted that interference from abroad and restrictive measures imposed due to national security concerns had a negative impact on the process.^[20] Observers noted credible, persistent, and widespread allegations of the use of illegal funds for vote buying, linked to the leader of the dissolved Șor Party, and the use of foreign private sponsorship to fund local infrastructure projects in some districts, to gain votes.^[10]

An appeal to the Chișinău Court of Appeal after the local elections by the Chance party in December 2023 led to a reversal of the ban of 600 candidates removed from the November ballot.^[21] This lifting of the ban was reversed on 4 October 2023 by the Exceptional Situations Committee, which stated that any former member of the Șor party who had been charged, indicted, or under suspicion of committing criminal acts would be banned from participating in the elections.^[22] The bans on 21 candidates were amended on 4 October 2023 to a prohibition on running for three years.^[20]