Jul
30
Moldovan Communists lost ground in elections: poll
CHISINAU (Reuters) – The communist government in Moldova lost ground against the opposition with inclination towards the West in the parliamentary elections on Wednesday showed the first results of the vote.
Moldova, the most Poor Europe is wavering between aligned with the West or East, because the elderly and rural dwellers prefer the communists and the young urban voters look at the European Union.
The veteran leader Vladimir Voronin dissolved Parliament last month and called elections after the opposition parties for the second time frustrate his plan to lawmakers to choose a successor designated by him as president.
A survey of mouth urn that the Communists got 41.7 percent of the vote, equivalent to just 45 seats in the parliament of 101 members.
The figure would be 15 seats under which the communists won the elections in April, which is sufficient to elect a successor to Voronin, who has ruled the state's poorest Europe since 2001.
Voronin described the poll as made by amateurs and said that such surveys underestimate the true support for the Communist Party. The pollsters spoke to 17,385 people at 200 polling centers.
The opposition Liberal Democrats have gained the second place with 17.4 percent of the vote, enough for 19 seats in accordance the survey. The Liberals won 16 per cent and the Democratic Party 12.5 percent, the poll said.
Violent protests against an April election that the opposition denounced as rigged led Voronin — supported by accusing Russia-Romania, an EU and NATO of seeking to overthrow the government.
The communists want closer ties with Europe, but come to Moscow as a strategic partner. Russia maintains troops in the separatist region of Transdniestria in the former Soviet state and provides more than 90 percent of the country's energy.
Moscow has pledged 500 million dollars in loans to help country amid the global crisis.
If the communists formed an alliance with the Democratic party, which according to the poll would have achieved 13 seats, then Voronin's party would be able to form a government coalition, but could not elect a president.
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Edited by Ricardo Figueroa in Spanish)