(Adnkronos) – Moldova has voted ‘Yes’ to enshrine the path to European Union membership in its Constitution, though by a narrow margin, with only a few thousand votes more than the ‘No’ side. With 99.2% of the votes counted, 50.3% of Moldovans approved the referendum question, compared to 49.7% who rejected it. The result is not yet official, but the margin is sufficient to determine the final outcome. It was the hundreds of thousands of emigrants in European countries, the United States, and Canada, who voted from abroad, and therefore counted later, that made the victory of the pro-Western front possible.
The pro-European result of the referendum is not enough to hide the serious situation of the front that defends it, not only for the few thousand votes with which it was obtained. The outgoing President Maia Sandu, who yesterday was voted for by 41.9 percent of Moldovans, will face the former prosecutor, candidate of the pro-Russian socialist party, Alexandr Stoianoglo, in the November 3 runoff, who took 26 percent of the votes, many more than expected by the polls, which also predicted safe percentages for the European victory in the referendum. The country’s split makes the reform process even more difficult, especially after next year’s parliamentary elections.
