(23 Feb 2019) Final campaigning is wrapping up in Moldova as more than three million voters prepare to cast their ballot in Sunday's parliamentary elections to choose representatives for the next four-year term of the country's 101-seat legislature.
No outright party is expected to win the ballot which will likely deepen a rift between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces, amid concerns about endemic corruption and a crumbling democracy in the former Soviet Republic nation.
The main parties contesting the latest ballot are the Democratic Party, which heads the ruling Coalition with its junior partner the Popular European Party, the Socialists, who favour closer ties with Russia and the pro-European ACUM which opposes both major parties and signed a pledge not to enter into a coalition with them if no party wins an outright majority.
A major issue which will undoubtedly decide the voting result is the country's shrinking population.
Officials estimate that a quarter of Moldovan citizens have left the country, which is wedged between Romania and Ukraine, in search of better life in European Union nations or in Russia.
In the capital Chisinau, a small group of people brought shoes belonging to their loved ones who have re-located abroad and placed them in the city's central square as part of a symbolic event.
Organiser Elena Druta said that what she wishes for families who have moved overseas to one day return to their home nation.
"The eventual rise of the economy doesn't encourage a family to come back to Moldova. They would eventually return if they would feel that this is a place in which they would feel free, if they would realise that at in a certain future one can live freely in this country and that this country is democratic," Druta said.
Sunday's election threatens to keep the country stuck in limbo between the West and Russia, at a time when allegations of government corruption and concerns over erosion of democracy have strained relations with the EU.
Moldova signed an association agreement with the EU in 2014, a move seen as a step toward joining the bloc.
However, last year the European Parliament called Moldova "a state captured by oligarchic interests."
The EU also froze aid to Moldova after a local court invalidated the 2018 Chisinau mayoral election on a technicality, a move seen as a bid to thwart the apparent victory of a pro-European candidate.

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