Moldava’s Breakaway Transnistria Re-Elects Leader in Dubious Poll

The current leader of the breakaway region of Transnistria, Vadim Krasnoselsky, won so-called presidential elections on Sunday with 79 per cent of the votes, after most potential rivals were eliminated from the race and with few foreign observers.

Competing only against a local farmer and clerk from Grigoriopol, Sergey Pinzar, Krasnoselski won 113,620 voters, while Pinzar won only 16,914 votes.

Kransoselky, 51, is a Russian police general who used to work for the monopolist Sheriff Holding, owned by the local oligarch Viktor Gusan, who de facto runs the Russia-supported region.

The Central Electoral Commission in Tiraspol eliminated Krasnoselky's competitors one by one for different reasons before polling day.

Moldovan authorities last Wednesday received a petition from a group of Transnistrian citizens denouncing the "criminal regime" led by Kransnoselsky, and complaining of the subversion of civil rights in the region.

The authorities in Tiraspol started the voting process on December 6. Voters had six days to express their electoral options, limited to just the two candidates running for the presidential seat.

The move came after only 57,536 citizens of the region voted in Russia's parliamentary elections for the Russian Duma in September, meaning a little more than 25 per cent.

Russia has awarded at least 220,000 passports to about two-thirds of the total population of the breakaway region.

Elena Gorodetskaya, chair of the Central Election Commission, announced that 144,136 voters made their choice based on preliminary results.

"Every vote, every ballot, thrown in the ballot box, is a brick, without which it is impossible to build a democratic society and the rule of law," Krasnoselski said on...