Moldova’s Parliament Fails To Elect New President

There was only one presidential candidate, Marian Lupu, leader of the Democratic Party, PDM, and former parliament speaker. He was nominated by Moldova's pro-West government coalition, which comprises PDM, the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and Our Moldova Alliance.

The coalition controls 53 of the 101 seats in the chamber and had enough support to form a cabinet but is short of the 61-seat majority needed to elect the country's next president, which means it has to rely on support from members of parliament from opposition Communist Party.

The Communist Party said in a statement released after the vote that it will support no presidential candidate nominated by the coalition. The Communists, which have 48 seats in parliament, had nominated no candidate for head of state in Tuesday’s vote.

All the 53 members of parliament that were present on Tuesday voted for Lupu, the chairman of the parliamentary commission on presidential elections Ion Plesca told the parliament.

Under Moldova’s constitution, the legislature now has one more chance to elect a new president within 30 days. The parliament should be dissolved and a new general election should be called if the second attempt fails.

The same situation occurred earlier this year, when the previous Communist-dominated legislature failed to elect a president. Parliament was dissolved and snap elections were held on July 29, in which the Communists were ousted from power.

In September, Parliament speaker and leader of the Liberal Party, Mihai Ghimpu, assumed the functions of the president in line with the constitution, after Communists' leader Vladimir Voronin, who had served two four year-terms since 2001, resigned.