Ion Ceban

The National Anticorruption Centre, together with prosecutors and investigative officers, carried out 24 raids on Thursday, after which two employees of the General Directorate of Medical and Social Assistance of the Chisinau Municipal Council, including the head of the Health Directorate, Boris Gîlcă, were detained for 72 hours.

Moldova has found an original method to boost the vaccination process of its population against COVID-19, by using a trolleybus and a bus as mobile centres for vaccination.

Thousands of farmers from the southern part on Moldova arrived in Chisinau to protest on Friday in front of the government building, demanding state aid after a severe drought decimated their crops this year.

According to its statements, the Chicu government had several key objectives. They were ensuring energy security, promoting social projects and, as the new Prime Minister declared right after his appointment, carrying out the same justice reform that was the real reason for the former government's fall.

Socialist Party candidate Ion Ceban won the mayoral race for Chisinau in the elections on Sunday with 52.39 per cent of the votes cast.

The pro-European candidate and co-president of the ACUM bloc, Andrei Nastase, scored 48.61 per cent.

According to data from the Central Election Commission, Ceban won the votes of 123,807 citizens, while Nastase got 112,513 votes.

In the second run-off round of local elections in the former Soviet country, Moldovan citizens on Sunday will select bosses for another 380 town halls.

In the first round, on October 20, voters elected 518 mayors in a race in which the pro-Russian Moldovan Socialist Party, PSRM, won the biggest number of votes in the country.

Pro-Russian forces scored an important victory on Sunday when they won the first round of voting for a new mayor in Chisinau - long seen as a bastion of pro-Western politics.

The Socialist candidate, Ion Ceban, won 40.30 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Andrei Nastase, candidate of the pro-EU ACUM bloc, who took 31.01 per cent.

Pro-Russian Socialists are expected to triumph in the local elections being held on Sunday in Moldova, where all eyes are on the outcome in the pro-European bastion of the capital, Chisinau.

The leader of the Dignity and Truth Platform Party, PPDA, Andrei Nastase, intends to run again in the new mayoral race for the capital, Chisinau which should take place this summer. Parliament in Moldova has not yet set an exact date for the election.

After Moldova's President, Igor Dodon, was involved in a car accident on Sunday, some pro-Russian Socialist deputies have claimed that he was the victim of a murder attempt.

"This was not an accident but a direct blow to the car. This is an attempt at murder!" Socialist deputy Vlad Batrincea wrote on Facebook.