November 14 (SeeNews) - Moldova's Socialist Party (PSRM) leader Igor Dodon received 52.4% of the votes in Sunday's presidential elections, while Maia Sandu, leader of the pro-European Action and Solidarity Party (PAS), got 47.6%, preliminary data from the election commission showed on Monday.
Dodon received 803,794 of the 1,609,809 possible votes, the commission said in a press release, after counting 99.86% of the ballots cast.
"I come with a very clear message: the elections are completed, people have voted! Let us not disturb the spirits in society and whatever the outcome, to call on people to be calm. We do not need agitation and a destabilized society. The first thing that the one who lost the elections needs to do is to call for people to be calm," Igor Dodon said during a press conference on Sunday night, broadcast by local TV station Realitatea.md.
Dodon added that he will be the president of both left and right wing supporters, of all Moldovans, who might preffer either EU or Russia, and congratulated his opponent, Maia Sandu, on the very hard fought campaign.
Dodon, born in 1975 in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, is a university professor in economics. He has said that as president of Moldova, he plans to turn Moldova into federation and to end the recently signed free trade agreement with the EU. Also, Dodon plans to unify the breakaway region of Transnistria with Moldova and to end the conflict there.
This was the second round of Moldova's presidential elections, as in the first round held on October 30, neither of the two candidates gathered 51% of the votes needed to have been elected in the first round. In the first round, Dodon got 47.98% of the votes, while Maia Sandu got 38.71%.
Moldova held its first direct presidential elections in 16 years after in March the Constitutional Court ruled that the president will be elected by popular vote. Since 2000, Moldova's president had been elected for a four-year term by a majority of 60% of the MPs in the 101-seat parliament.
The tiny landlocked ex-Soviet state of some 3 million people has strong historical and political ties with its western neighbour Romania, with more than 75% of the population speaking Romanian. However, some 10% of the population living predominantly in the internationally unrecognised separatist republic of Transnistria, which broke away from Moldova in the 1990s, speak Russian and identify themselves as Russians.
On November 8, The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) executive board approved a $178.7 million (161.4 million euro) three-year funding arrangements with Moldova aimed to support the country’s economic and financial reform programme.
The country has been trying to cope with a major banking crisis since about $1 billion went missing from three local banks in November 2014.
($= 0.919 euro)