Celebrating Moldova’s EU referendum

On October 20, Moldova held a historic referendum on whether the country should amend the Constitution of Moldova to include the Moldovan citizens' wish for European Union membership, in order to prevent future governments from easily shifting the country away from its pro-European trajectory.

“Yes” won with a small margin. The opinion polls showed a much bigger margin for “Yes”, so the initial results of “No” leading was shocking to many.

I couldn’t sleep well that night, so I checked my phone several times to see how the vote is going. The votes were published online as the precincts finished their count. It flipped several times between “yes” and “no” that night.

At about 5 in the morning, I observed it flipping once more from “no” to “yes” and got screenshots as it happened. Maybe this was the final, decisive flip.

Moldova has been the target of sustained russian attacks on its democracy, to prevent exactly this outcome from happening. russia threw everything that it has at Moldova: outright vote buying, violence, threats of violence, intimidation, fear mongering, propaganda, you name it. So this was a painful defeat for russian imperialism. The smaller the margin, the more painful it was.

Of course, whenever russia is involved, so is lying and stealing. A bunch of people didn’t get paid for their vote as russia had promised, and were asking foreign journalists how to get their payment.

Moldova’s EU referendum victory is an important milestone in dismantling russian imperialism. russia aims to maintain an image of invincibility and greatness. Whenever a nation breaks free from the shackles of russian imperialism, it weakens the remaining part, until, hopefully, the russian imperialist evil disappears entirely.

Here are the next elections happening in the nearest future where russia is similarly involved and trying to manipulate democracies to vote for an outcome that’s more favourable for its imperialism:

October 26, elections in Georgia 🇬🇪. The “Georgian Dream” russian nightmare party represents russia, but there is a strong united pro-Europe, pro-freedom opposition.

November 3, presidential elections round 2 in Moldova 🇲🇩. The pro-European candidate and current president Maia Sandu won round 1 on October 20, but didn’t get the majority, so round 2 will be held.

November 5, presidential elections in the United States 🇺🇸. Donald Trump is the russian candidate.

Let’s use Moldova’s EU referendum victory as an inspiration to choose freedom everywhere. If people of Moldova can choose Europe and freedom over russian imperialism, so can we all.