Moldova's politics: a presidency decided by sixty-one votes

How the Moldovan constitution divides power

The constitution ratified by parliament on 28 July 1994 describes a unitary and indivisible republic, and it gives the legislature the central place. Article 60 calls Parliament "the supreme representative body of the people and the sole legislative authority of the State" and fixes it at 101 members, elected by direct and secret ballot for four years. There is one chamber. No upper house exists to delay or revise what the 101 decide.

The government comes out of that chamber. The president designates a candidate for prime minister after hearing the parliamentary factions, and within 15 days the candidate asks for a vote of confidence on a programme and on the full list of ministers. Confidence needs a majority of the elected members, which means 51 votes whether or not all 101 turn up. A quarter of the deputies can table a motion of no confidence, and a majority of members carries it.

Article 106a lets the government stake its survival on a programme, a policy statement or a draft law. If no censure motion tabled within three days is carried, the draft law counts as adopted.

The president can dissolve parliament, but only on narrow terms. Article 85 allows it when no government can be formed, or when lawmaking is blocked for three months, and it requires at least two failed investiture requests over 45 days. Parliament may be dissolved once a year at most, never in the last six months of the president's term, and never during a state of emergency, martial law or war. That last clause decided the outcome of one crisis, described below.

A Constitutional Court of six judges, each serving six years, sits outside all three branches. The sources disagree on who appoints them. The English text of the constitution as revised in 2016 gives two appointments each to parliament, the government and the Superior Council of Magistrates; the English Wikipedia article on Moldova names the president in place of the government. Both agree on what the court can do: review laws, presidential decrees, government decisions and treaties, interpret the constitution, confirm election and referendum results, and rule on whether a party is constitutional. Its judgments are final and cannot be appealed.

Why parliament began choosing Moldova's president

The first presidents were chosen by voters. Mircea Snegur, a former communist who had become chairman of the Supreme Soviet in 1990, won an unopposed election on 8 December 1991. Petru Lucinschi, who had led the Moldavian Communist Party from 1989 to 1991, won the presidential election of 1996 and took office on 15 January 1997.

The Lucinschi years were marked by short governments. Ion Ciubuc served from January 1997 to February 1999, Ion Sturza from February to November 1999, and Dumitru Braghiș from December 1999. On 21 July 2000 parliament adopted an amendment that turned Moldova from a presidential into a parliamentary republic. The president would no longer be elected by the people but by parliament, and a candidate needed three-fifths of the deputies, at least 61 votes. The English Wikipedia describes the change as designed to reduce executive authority in favour of the legislature.

The arithmetic worked at first. In the election of 25 February 2001 only three of 31 parties passed the 6% threshold, and the Party of Communists won 49.9% of the vote and 71 of the 101 seats, ten more than it needed. It elected Vladimir Voronin president on 4 April 2001.

The next count was tighter. In March 2005 the Communists won 56 seats, five short of 61. Voronin was re-elected on 4 April 2005 with votes from part of the opposition, which showed what the threshold required: a presidency that any 41 deputies could block had to be negotiated across party lines whenever no party held three-fifths on its own.

Why the Moldovan presidency stood vacant for years

The threshold was tested in 2009 and it held the office empty for almost three years.

How the vote failed after the April election

The Communists won 49.48% of the vote in the parliamentary election of 5 April 2009. Opposition parties called the result fraudulent, protests followed on 6 and 7 April, and part of the crowd broke into the parliament building and set its interior on fire. In May the Communists put forward Zinaida Greceanîi, the prime minister, to succeed Voronin. The opposition questioned the election results and refused to take part in either of two presidential votes, and without them the Communists could not reach three-fifths. Parliament was dissolved and a new election was held on 29 July 2009.

The four pro-Western parties that won that election formed a coalition, the Alliance for European Integration, and took the government. They too fell short of 61 seats. The office now had a coalition that could govern and no majority that could fill the presidency, and Voronin resigned in September 2009.

How the stalemate ended

The coalition tried to remove the threshold by going to the voters. A referendum in September 2010 proposed to amend the constitution so that the president would again be elected by popular vote. It failed because turnout fell short of the one-third of the electorate required for validity. A parliamentary election in November 2010 left the balance between the coalition and the Communists where it had been.

Three acting presidents held the office in turn. On 16 March 2012 parliament elected Nicolae Timofti, a veteran jurist, with 62 votes out of 101, while the Communist faction boycotted the vote. Britannica attributes the result to the defection of three Communist legislators, which took the coalition to 62, one more than the rule required.

How the Constitutional Court restored the popular vote

The court ended the arrangement without a new amendment. On 4 March 2016 it ruled that the constitutional change of 2000 on the election of the president was unconstitutional, and the method reverted to a two-round direct election. The first vote under the restored rule was held in November 2016, and Igor Dodon won it.

Article 78 now reads as it did before 2000. A candidate must be a citizen over 40 who has lived in Moldova for at least ten years and speaks the official language. Half the votes cast wins in the first round; otherwise the two leading candidates go to a second, where the winner needs more votes for than against. The term is four years, and nobody may serve more than two in a row. A two-thirds majority of parliament may suspend the president for violating the constitution, after which a national referendum must be held within 30 days.

The 2016 ruling was one of several in which the court settled a question parliament had left open. On 5 December 2013 it held that the Declaration of Independence of 27 August 1991 and the constitution together form a "block of constitutionality", with the declaration as the primary legal basis. That ruling underlay the language law of 2023, covered in Moldova's history.

In 2021 a court ruling opened the way to an early election. A new president elected in November 2020 faced a parliament that rejected every candidate for prime minister, and a state of emergency brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic was in force. Article 85 forbids dissolution during a state of emergency. After the court ended the state of emergency, the president dissolved parliament on 28 April 2021. The election of 11 July 2021 gave one party 63 of the 101 seats, and observers from the OSCE described it as well administered and competitive.

On 19 June 2023 the court used its power over parties and declared the Șor Party unconstitutional, citing the constitutional requirement that parties uphold political pluralism, the rule of law and the territorial integrity of Moldova.

Which majorities can change Moldovan law

Moldovan institutions are built around a small set of numbers, and several of the crises since 2000 have been fights over whether a coalition could reach one of them. A simple majority of members forms and removes governments. Everything that changes the structure of the state needs more.

The court sits inside that system too. No draft amendment reaches parliament without its advisory opinion, adopted by at least four of the six judges, and nothing may be amended under emergency rule or in wartime.

Two referendums on the constitution have gone opposite ways. The referendum of September 2010 on the presidency failed on turnout. The referendum of 20 October 2024 asked whether to write the goal of European Union membership into the constitution, which the English Wikipedia describes as a way to make it harder for future governments to shift the country away from its pro-European course, and it passed with 50.17% voting yes.

How Gagauzia and the left bank fit the state

Moldova is divided into 32 districts, or raioane, with Chișinău and several other cities holding municipality status, and two autonomous territorial units: Gagauzia in the south and the Left Bank of the Dniester in the east. The two are treated differently in the constitution, and only one of them is under the government's control.

What the Gagauz autonomy consists of

The Gagauz, a Turkic-speaking people heavily Russified according to the English Wikipedia, made up about 4% of the population in the 2024 census. Parliament passed the Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia on 23 December 1994, and the autonomy was constituted in 1995 with its administrative centre at Comrat. Article 111 describes it as a form of self-determination of the Gagauz people that remains "an integrant and inalienable part" of Moldova, with its own representative and executive bodies and its own budget. Its People's Assembly holds the right of legislative initiative in the national parliament, a right the constitution otherwise gives only to deputies, the president and the government.

Gagauz votes have run against national majorities. In 2014, shortly before Moldova signed its association agreement with the European Union, nearly 99% of voters in a Gagauz referendum backed joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. In July 2023 the leader of the autonomy thanked Ilan Shor, the fugitive head of the banned Șor Party, for his financial support.

How the constitution treats Transnistria

Article 110 provides that places on the left bank of the Dniester "may be assigned special forms and conditions of autonomy" by organic law. The central government does not control the territory, and its final status is disputed; this catalogue records the dispute and takes no position on it. Voters there backed independence again in a referendum in 2006.

The OSCE Mission to Moldova has worked toward a settlement since 4 February 1993, and negotiations have run in a format with Moldova, Transnistria, the OSCE, Russia and Ukraine, joined later by the European Union and the United States as observers. The mission reported a meeting of the Political Representatives on 24 September 2026. A law of 2 February 2023 introduced criminal penalties for separatism, including prison terms, and for financing or inciting it.

Why a neutral Moldova negotiates on defence

Article 11 proclaims Moldova's permanent neutrality and forbids the stationing of foreign troops on its territory. The English Wikipedia puts the number of Russian soldiers in Transnistria at about 1,500 in 2023. A Moldovan foreign minister, Andrei Stratan, repeatedly said they were there against the will of the government and called on them to leave; they are stationed there as peacekeepers. In March 2022 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recognised Transnistria as "a Moldovan territory occupied by Russia".

Moldova has taken part in military cooperation throughout. It joined NATO's Partnership for Peace on 16 March 1994 and ratified the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe on 30 October 1992. On 21 May 2024 it signed a security and defence partnership with the European Union. The EU allocated €317 million through the European Peace Facility between 2021 and 2026 to modernise the Moldovan armed forces, and its civilian Partnership Mission, launched in May 2023 to counter hybrid threats and foreign information manipulation, has a mandate extended to 31 May 2027.

The accession negotiations make the tension explicit. At the second accession conference, on 15 June 2026, the EU and Moldova opened the fundamentals cluster, covering democratic institutions and public administration reform as well as economic criteria, and the EU set interim benchmarks that must be met before it can progress. At the third, on 14 July 2026, they opened the cluster that contains chapter 30 on external relations and chapter 31 on foreign, security and defence policy. A state whose constitution requires a referendum of registered voters to alter its neutrality is now negotiating the EU chapter on common defence.

Ties to the east have been cut by statute. In February 2023 Russia cancelled a 2012 decree underpinning Moldova's sovereignty. In May 2023 the government suspended its participation in the Commonwealth of Independent States, in July 2023 parliament withdrew from the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, and on 8 April 2026 laws denouncing the Belovezha Accords, the Alma-Ata Protocol and the CIS Charter were promulgated.

How Moldova has answered outside interference

The European Commission's opinion on Moldova's application in June 2022 listed the steps expected before the country could progress, among them reform of the justice system, implementation of ODIHR and Venice Commission recommendations, action against corruption and organised crime, and "deoligarchisation".

Moldovan institutions have treated foreign funding of parties as a security matter. A 2021 document attributed to a directorate of Russia's FSB set out a ten-year plan to destabilise Moldova through energy supplies and sympathetic politicians, with help from the Orthodox Church; Russia denies any such plan. In February 2023 the Moldovan authorities described an alleged plot to overthrow the government, and on 10 March 2023 the coordinator for strategic communications at the United States National Security Council said Washington believed Russia was pursuing destabilisation efforts in Moldova.

The responses ran through the courts and parliament. After the Constitutional Court banned the Șor Party in June 2023, parliament voted on 31 July 2023 to bar its leaders from standing in elections for five years. Its founder, Ilan Shor, had left for Israel in 2019 after being convicted in absentia of fraud and money laundering and sentenced to 15 years. In August 2023 the Chance party, which had affiliated with him, was deregistered days before local elections after the head of the Security and Intelligence Service said it was corrupting voters and using illegal funds from Russia. On 28 April 2023 the EU adopted a framework for sanctions against people who undermine or threaten Moldova, which applied to 29 individuals and 5 entities when it was last extended to 29 April 2027.

Before the parliamentary election of 28 September 2025, a BBC investigation described a network recruited on Telegram that posted pro-Russian material, attacked the pro-EU governing party and ran fake polls, and linked it to Shor and to a banned organisation called Evrazia. Shor said he would contest the ban on standing for election.