Those Who Count the Votes
By: Irina Anghel
Tags: Romania, Moldova, Presidential Election, Diaspora, Voting

Moldovan Students in Iași Take Elections and Own Future in Their Hands

December 8 — The Students’ Cultural House (CCS), a Communist-era creamy yellow building, is where school plays and fashion shows happen in Iași, Romania. It’s where you call a taxi to take you home on a night out. It’s where you attend job fairs to find work. But the over 50 people, mostly the elderly, gathered in front of CCS just before dawn on Sunday, November 15, burgundy Moldovan passports in hand, are not here for any of these reasons. They are here to elect the future president of Moldova in the second and final round of the election.

On the first floor of the building, Olga Codreanu, a 21-year old studying Political Science in Iași, originally from Moldova, is giddy with excitement. The clock strikes a quarter to seven and the members of the electoral commission turn on the voting system to check everything is in order. “I want to vote!” Codreanu says right away. She rushes to the voting booth, places the blue stamp on her ballot, pushes the paper inside the transparent empty ballot box, then runs down the stairs, sweeps across the ground floor and tells the gendarmes the people waiting outside should start queuing.

It’s now seven o’clock and the doors open. After they get their temperature checked, as required by Covid-19 prevention measures, people are finally let in. They head up the stairs. It’s time to vote.

But today those who count the votes count just as much as those who vote. After a poorly run first round, which left voters queuing in the cold for as much as three hours, Moldovan students attending university in Iași decided to take organizing the second round in their hands. They made up most of the 13 members of the electoral commission, which oversees the voting process, changed the voting location, ran a social media campaign encouraging Moldovans in Iași to vote, and made sure everything ran smoothly on November 15.

For Moldovan students, this is the day that could change the future of the country they left — as well as their own future. Ever since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova, part of Romania until 1940, has been ridden with poverty, systemic corruption, political instability and demographic decline. The feeling among young people in particular is that there is nothing left for them in Moldova. This election might change the game.

“Not only were we involved in the voting process, but also in changing the destiny of our country,” says Codreanu, who has honey-blonde wavy hair and hazel eyes.

Moldovans now have Maia Sandu on the presidential voting ballot, a 48-year old Harvard-educated politician that vowed to eradicate corruption and bring Moldova closer to Europe. Over 57% voted for Sandu, making her the first female president of Moldova, and against Igor Dodon, Moldova’s former pro-Russian president. One in six votes came from the diaspora, 15% of which from those aged 18–25. For them, Sandu embodies the hope that Moldova could become a country they won’t feel forced to leave — and might even return to.

Codreanu says Bălți, her hometown in Moldova, is a “dying city.” Her mother has emigrated to Rome, Italy. Most young people, just like her, go to study in Romania or further West. “Everyone leaves,” she says.

Moldova’s population shrank by a third in the last 30 years, with an estimated 2.7 million living in the country in 2019. Among those who left are many young people seeking better education opportunities abroad — or trying to escape the Moldovan system.

Out of the over 10.000 Moldovan students enrolled in Romanian universities, the largest part, 1,600, are studying at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, the country’s oldest.

Alina Frecauțan is one of them. Originally from Chișinău, the ambitious blue-eyed 21-year old is the leader of the Moldovan students’ society in Iași and the mastermind behind the November 15 elections. Like all young people who leave to study abroad, Frecauțan wanted to get out of her comfort zone. But her home country being Moldova, the poor quality of higher education also played an important part.

“The only situation in which I could see myself studying in Moldova was if I hadn’t gotten accepted abroad,” says Frecauțan, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in marketing, and has also completed her undergraduate studies in Iași. “Luckily that was not the case.”

Undergraduate and master’s diplomas obtained in Moldova are not recognized anywhere abroad. “Our new president Maia Sandu promised that Moldovan diplomas will start being recognized across Europe from next summer,” Frecauțan said, who remembers Sandu from her stint as Moldova’s Education Minister.

Then, of course, there is the issue of everyday corruption. “There are some universities or some professors who don’t let you pass unless you bribe them,” Frecauțan said. “And I didn’t want to find myself forced to pay to pass an exam for which I would have studied.”

Many think like this, says Petru Negură, a sociologist and professor at the International University of Moldova. Negură himself is abroad at the moment: he is currently in Germany at the Regensburg University on a research fellowship.

The relationship between poor quality education, poverty and depopulation is a two-way bumpy dirt road. “The student population has halved since the end of the 2000s, yet the number of places available in universities has remained the same” Negură said. “This means the selection is non-existent. We take everyone in. So the quality of students is low and the academics are poorly paid.”

“Education, health, infrastructure… everything. Everything must change,” Codreanu says, when asked what are the main issues in Moldova.

And “change” is the best word to describe November 15. Just two weeks ago, ballots were cast in the first round of the presidential election, when the polling station in Iași was located in the tiny Moldovan consulate. People were waiting in lines of 300 for up to three hours on what was a cold, gloomy day. Some gave up and left.

November 15 is surprisingly sunny. Moldovans vote in the large CCS. Over 3,400 cast their ballots, more than twice the first round numbers, yet the maximum waiting time outside is 10 minutes. They take photos, smile and joke around with friends. Even the gendarmes, ensuring social distancing is maintained and wearing dark berets, cheer Moldovans for their enthusiasm.

Part of this is the merit of Frecauțan and the other Moldovan students.

“After the first round, we realized we must do something about the voting conditions,” Frecauțan said. Together with other students, she contacted the Moldovan consulate and started looking for a new location. They also started a social media campaign with posts and videos encouraging people to vote and ensuring them that they won’t freeze in line for three hours again.

On November 15, Frecauțan was one of the 13 members of the electoral commission, which meant she arrived at CCS at 6am, one hour before the polls opened, and left at 2am, once they finished counting the votes. “Even if we were exhausted towards the end of the day, there was still a lot of excitement,” Frecauțan said.

Buzzing around the electoral commission throughout the day were other student volunteers, like Codreanu, who checked the temperature of those entering the polling station and provided constant warm tea refills.

As people were coming in and out to vote, words like “Thank you for changing the voting location!”, “This was so easy!” and “How do you think we’ll knock off Dodon this time?” filled the large first-floor hall of the CCS, where the polling station was set.

And part of this is also the Sandu effect. As Codreanu was posted at the CCS entrance letting voters in, she quickly noticed a pattern. Every third voter or so had something bright yellow on, either a scarf, a hat or a small ribbon.

“That’s how I knew Maia Sandu was going to win,” says Codreanu. Bright yellow is the colour of Maia Sandu’s party PAS, which emerged as an almost grassroot-protest movement against worsening corruption and democratic institutions in the last decade.

“Everyone now has high hopes for Maia Sandu and her party,” says Negură. “She’s a different kind of politician, but there’s always the issue of broken promises.”

Over the years young Moldovans saw their hopes crushed by several pro-democratic governments. In the last ten years, the justice system was severely weakened. And there was, of course, the so-called “theft of the century”. In 2015, it was revealed that $1 billion had vanished from three of Moldova’s largest banks — an eighth of the country’s GDP. Vladimir Plahotniuc, Moldova’s most notorious oligarch, was among those charged with involvement in the bank theft.

This only accelerated the depopulation crisis. Once young people leave, they rarely look back with thoughts of returning. The most recent study showed that only 10% of Moldovans who went to Romania for their studies returned.

Negură says the economic aspect is the most important for those who leave. “If there were a minimum chance for wellbeing in Moldova, people would’ve ignored some failings in the political system, even systemic corruption.”

“The thinking is that, were they to return to Moldova, they’d have to fight for a poorly paid job,” says Negură. “Which is true.”

Whether Maia Sandu will deliver on her promises depends on her party’s ability to call snap elections and change the make-up of the government. “But even the simple fact that Maia Sandu is president gives us a lot of hope,” Negură says.

It’s now past midnight on November 15 and Frecauțan and the other members of the electoral commission are counting the votes. Codreanu left, but keeps messaging the ones still at CCS to see if there’s anything she can help with — and get updates.

They begin with counting the faulty ballots and then move on to the first of the two candidates. One, two, three, four, five…

The question of returning home will be on many’s minds in the days to come. Frecauțan, who is currently employed in a marketing agency in Iași, will see her dream of starting her own business in Chișinău — and return to her beloved parks, as less of a dream than a plan.

Codreanu will fantasize about working for the Moldovan government after finishing a master’s in international relations. Still, she will remain skeptical. She would never return to Moldova without knowing she could make a difference there. And she won’t feel that can happen just yet, as much as she wishes to.

Forty six, forty seven, forty eight, forty nine, fifty votes for Dodon. That’s it. There were 3,404 votes in total, so by now it’s now clear that Maia Sandu has won. But Frecauțan and her 12 colleagues start counting her votes regardless.

One, two, three, four…

“As we were counting the votes, we felt this hope lighting up our souls,” Frecauțan said.

One thousand, one thousand and one, one thousand and two…

“We felt that the age of incompetence is behind us…”

Three thousand four hundred and one, three thousand four hundred and two…

“…and that a better future led by an honest leader awaits us all.”

Three thousand four hundred and three, three thousand four hundred and four votes for Maia Sandu. And they’re done. It is 2am on November 16 and Frecauțan, Codreanu and the other Moldovan students in Iași might have just changed their minds about returning home. The answer is no longer a firm “no”, but a hopeful “maybe.”