The details aren't in yet, but Marian Lupu is trying hard to wear the statesman's mantle.

Reuters a few minutes ago:


UPDATE: Reuters has added a bit more, including the "vital" need for dialogue with the Communists.

-- Andy Heil

RFE/RL's Moldovan Service reports that Romanian President Traian Basescu has tried to drive a nail into President Voronin's political coffin. Or at least limit his options.


Basescu had already stoked the fires in a pretty frank interview with RFE/RL ahead of this week's elections. But is he overstating his influence across the border just a tad?

-- Andy Heil

Western institutions' initial conclusions about the Moldovan elections are no major surprise, since they stress that "the process underscored the need for continued democratic reforms to restore public trust."

But they did seem a bit more upbeat than many would have expected going into the vote, particularly given Moldovan authorities' fondness for expelling their counterparts.

A quick tally shows "positive/good" edging out "negative" 3-2 in the joint (OSCE, ODIHR, PACE, and European Parliament) press release.

The money quote comes from the head of the European Parliament's delegation:


The observers repeatedly criticize administrative and media advantages enjoyed by the ruling Communists:


Western monitors appear to have salved their killer instinct in their lambasting of the Kyrgyz presidential election.

-- Andy Heil

RFE/RL's Russian Service has collected the views of some experts about the situation in Moldova.

Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Chisinau-based Institute for Public Policy, says:


On foreign relations, Barbarosie said this:


Russian political analyst Aleksandr Kynev had this to contribute:


-- Robert Coalson

Well, I guess it's still too early to start counting our unhatched chickens, but we still need to take note of the fact that at this moment -- after eight years of Communist monopoly -- that party has lost control over power.

Forty-eight seats for the Communists -- and considering the way the vote from abroad seems to be breaking, that figure might be 47 -- as opposed to the 60 they had in the last legislature is a far cry from the 80 percent support that President Vladimir Voronin was bragging about just yesterday.

Of course, we can't say that these elections were fair. After all, the Communists controlled all the main media in the country. There were problems with the voter lists. Moldovans abroad were practically disenfranchised. But despite all this -- despite the fact that this was the dirtiest election campaign in Moldova's history, despite the documented violations -- the Communists were unable to achieve the victory they had promised.

Now the question on everyone's lips is: Which side are you on, Marian Lupu? If it turns out -- God forbid -- that the Communists together with Lupu's Democratic Party control the magic 61 seats in parliament, will Lupu be able to resist the temptation to realize his ambition of becoming president?

The opposition, with which he has so far promised to form a coalition, cannot offer him that chance yet. But an "opposition coalition" that includes the Democrats would be able to choose a prime minister, form a government, and select a speaker of parliament. That means that before the next snap elections, which would be held early next year, the opposition would have time to create the conditions for holding the first-ever free and fair elections in the country.

In any event, the Communists can no longer claim that the youths who took to the streets in April were deceived by the opposition.

You can deceive a few thousand people, maybe, but you can't deceive all the voters who this time refused to cast their ballots for the Communists.

I congratulate all of us.

Russian analyst Vitaly Portnikov has taken his first swing at a postelection analysis in a piece on politcom.ru.

He opens by lambasting the overconfidence of the Communists and their leader, President Vladimir Voronin -- who dismissed the initial exit polls showing his looming defeat as "creative fantasies." But then Portnikov goes on to say that the election results mean that the "moment of truth" has come for the opposition:


Like many observers, he also continues to have doubts about ex-Communist Marian Lupu, who defected from Voronin's party last month and now heads the Democratic Party. Lupu has said he will not form a coalition with the Communists, but Portnikov says the early voting will show whether his quitting the Communists was a "technical project" to give the Communists an ally and secure the 61 votes needed to elect a successor to Voronin.

Portnikov speculates that if the standoff continues and new snap elections are called next spring, the Communists will fare even worse than they did this time, in part because the new authorities will control the "administrative resources." Common sense, he argues, would lead the Communists to try to come up with a compromise figure and vote with at least some of the opposition. "But Vladimir Voronin is not known for his common sense," Portnikov writes.

He thinks that any attempt by Lupu -- who has long coveted the presidency -- to strike a deal with the Communists alone will backfire on him. For one thing, the Democrats and the Communists together will most likely just barely be able to scrape together 61 votes, and even a single defection could bring any deal crashing down. If that happened, Lupu would go from being a kingmaker to being a political corpse in the next election.

-- Robert Coalson

As most eyes turn toward the postelection map, our Moldovan Service says Marian Lupu appears to have quashed Communist hopes that they might entice Lupu's Democrats into a bipartite coalition.

The way the numbers looked at last count, the Communists and Democratic Party would have won enough combined seats to control parliament but not elect a president -- the same predicament that a united opposition faces with the Democratic Party on its side.

But at the risk of parsing his words to our Moldovan Service too aggressively, I'd say Lupu also left himself room to blame either side if talks fail:


Huh? 

If you haven't seen it, former OSCE envoy Louis O'Neill pontificated on this scenario for us during yesterday's voting.

Natalia Morari has added her voice to those urging Lupu to make his intentions crystal clear.

Plus, Russian analyst Vitaly Portnikov is looking inside Lupu's soul. (Original Russian post is here.)

Can anyone offer a scenario under which the Communists gain a legitimate majority other than with Lupu's help?

-- Andy Heil