After the November 5 general local elections, Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu, leader of the ruling party, said in a press briefing that “Europe won in Moldova in most of the localities”.

“Dear citizens, thank you for coming out to vote and for your choice of mayors and councillors who will lead our localities (…) Europe has won in Moldova in most of the localities. Now we need to get to work and really bring the European standard of living home. The Action and Solidarity Party worked in a difficult campaign, with unprecedented interference by a foreign country in our internal affairs, with dirty money and propaganda that sowed distrust in society (…) Despite this unprecedented interference by a foreign state, PAS and the European teams of candidates achieved the best result in the country. We would have liked to have a Chisinau led by a truly European mayor, but we respect the choice of the people of Chisinau. We will learn from this vote and we will work even harder to win people’s trust.

We thank the teams in all sectors of the municipality and in the suburbs for their hard work, for a fair campaign and for every day worked with the teams. The people of Chisinau gave us their support to protect the city in the City Council. 84 614 citizens voted for a stronger PAS team in the City Council. The 20 PAS councillors will oversee all actions in the City Hall together with civil society and will not tolerate any decision that undermines the European course (…)”, said Igor Grosu.

Former socialist Ion Ceban won his second term as mayor of Chisinau with 50.62%, or 132 802 votes.

His opponent, Lilian Carp, won 28.23%, or 74 074 votes.

The new Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC) will consist of representatives of seven political parties. The preliminary results published by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) show that the National Alternative Movement (MAN) and the Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) won 20 seats each in the 5 November general local elections.

The Party of Socialists of Moldova (PSRM) could win 6 seats for municipal councillors and the Party of Communists of Moldova (PCRM) – two seats.