Wikipedia Deep Dive

Maia Sandu

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In December 2020, a woman who had never been married stood on the steps of the Palace of the Republic in Chișinău and delivered her inaugural address as president—not just in Romanian, but also in Russian, Ukrainian, Gagauz, and Bulgarian. The multilingual gesture was deliberate. Maia Sandu was signaling that she intended to be president of all Moldovans, not just those who shared her pro-European vision.

It was a remarkable moment for a country that had spent three decades oscillating between East and West, caught in the gravitational pull of both the European Union and the Russian Federation. Sandu had just defeated the incumbent Igor Dodon in a landslide, winning nearly 58 percent of the vote on a platform of anti-corruption and European integration. She was Moldova's first female president.

But perhaps more remarkably, she had gotten there despite—or perhaps because of—being attacked for the very things that would have been unremarkable for a male politician: her education, her career, her single status.

The Daughter of Risipeni

Maia Sandu was born on May 24, 1972, in Risipeni, a commune in the Fălești District of what was then the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Her father Grigorie was a doctor; her mother Emilia was a teacher. It was a modest background in a rural corner of the Soviet empire, but it produced someone who would eventually earn a master's degree from Harvard and advise the World Bank.

Her educational path tells a story of ambition and transformation. From 1988 to 1994, she studied management at the Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova in Chișinău. Then came a degree in international relations from the Academy of Public Administration. But the credential that would later prove most significant came in 2010, when she completed a Master of Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government—one of the most prestigious programs in the world for aspiring public servants.

Between 2010 and 2012, Sandu served as an adviser to the Executive Director at the World Bank, gaining the kind of international experience that few Moldovan politicians could claim. When she returned home to enter government, she brought with her a network of Western contacts and a reformist worldview shaped by exposure to how governance worked in countries far less troubled than her own.

The Education Minister Who Made Enemies

Sandu's first major government role came in 2012, when she became Moldova's Minister of Education. It's a position that sounds technocratic, even boring. In Moldova, it was anything but.

Education ministries in post-Soviet states are often hotbeds of corruption. Diplomas can be bought. Grades can be purchased. University admission can depend more on bribes than test scores. A reformer in such a position inevitably makes powerful enemies among those who profit from the status quo.

Sandu lasted until 2015. By then, she had established a reputation as someone willing to fight entrenched interests—and someone who refused to play the usual political games. When the Liberal Democratic Party considered her as a potential prime minister in July 2015, she set conditions that revealed her approach: she would only accept if the head of the National Bank and the State Prosecutor were removed. These were not arbitrary demands. Moldova was reeling from a banking scandal in which roughly one billion dollars—equivalent to about 12 percent of the country's entire economic output—had disappeared from three banks.

She didn't get the job. Valeriu Streleț was nominated instead. But Sandu had demonstrated something important: she was willing to walk away from power rather than compromise on accountability.

Building a Party from Scratch

In December 2015, Sandu launched something new. She called it "În /pas/ cu Maia Sandu"—"In Step with Maia Sandu"—a platform that would evolve into a full political party: the Party of Action and Solidarity, known by its Romanian acronym PAS.

The name was a statement of intent. "Action and Solidarity" suggested both urgency and unity, a departure from the oligarchic politics that had dominated Moldova since independence. The party positioned itself as pro-European, anti-corruption, and reform-minded—a combination that appealed to younger, urban, educated Moldovans who had grown disgusted with their country's chronic dysfunction.

But building a new party in Moldova meant challenging not just the pro-Russian Socialists but also the nominally pro-European establishment, which had proven quite capable of corruption despite its Western orientation. Sandu was staking out territory as a different kind of pro-European politician—one who actually meant it.

The 2016 Election and the Politics of Misogyny

The 2016 presidential election was Moldova's first direct presidential election in twenty years. Previously, presidents had been chosen by parliament. The return to popular election gave Sandu her first shot at the country's highest office.

She ran as the joint candidate of two pro-European parties, PAS and the Dignity and Truth Platform Party. Her opponent in the runoff was Igor Dodon, the leader of the Party of Socialists, a man who made no secret of his preference for closer ties with Russia over European integration.

The campaign was brutal. Sandu faced attacks that went far beyond policy disagreements. Former President Vladimir Voronin—himself a former Communist Party leader—called her "a laughingstock, a sin, and a national disgrace of Moldova." The core of his complaint? She was an unmarried woman in her forties.

The misogyny was explicit and unapologetic. Voronin accused her of betraying "family values," as if a woman's qualification for office depended on having a husband and children. Sandu's response was characteristically direct: "I never thought being a single woman is a shame. Maybe it is a sin even to be a woman?"

She lost the runoff, 48 percent to 52 percent. It was close enough to suggest that the attacks hadn't worked as well as her opponents hoped—but close enough, too, to be heartbreaking.

The Banking Scandal and the Missing Billion

To understand Moldovan politics, you have to understand the banking scandal. In 2014, approximately one billion dollars vanished from three Moldovan banks: Banca de Economii (the Bank of Savings), Unibank, and Banca Socială. The money was siphoned out through fraudulent loans, and the government ended up guaranteeing the losses—meaning ordinary Moldovan taxpayers were on the hook for about 12 percent of their country's gross domestic product.

The scandal implicated the highest levels of Moldovan politics and finance. It was exactly the kind of oligarchic theft that had made Moldovans cynical about their political class, whether nominally pro-European or pro-Russian.

In September 2016, Sandu sued the State Chancellery to gain access to the minutes of the cabinet meeting where the government had approved guarantees for the three failing banks. Prime Minister Pavel Filip responded by publishing the minutes on Facebook—an unusual venue for official documents. The minutes showed that the decision to provide emergency credit had been unanimous, and they included Sandu's own statements from her time as education minister.

This was a complicated situation. Sandu had been in the room when decisions were made, even if her portfolio was education rather than finance. The episode illustrated the difficulty of being a reformer within a system: you can try to change things from the inside, but you also become implicated in decisions made while you were there.

A Brief and Turbulent Prime Ministership

The 2019 parliamentary elections produced a fractured result. Sandu's PAS, allied with Andrei Năstase's Dignity and Truth Platform Party in a bloc called ACUM, won 26 of 101 seats. Not enough to govern alone, but enough to matter.

What happened next was surprising. ACUM had publicly pledged not to form a coalition with the Party of Socialists. But in June 2019, facing the alternative of allowing the corrupt Democratic Party to remain in power, Sandu and her allies did exactly what they had promised not to do: they formed a government with the Socialists.

The logic was defensive. Moldova was in the grip of an oligarch named Vlad Plahotniuc, who controlled the Democratic Party and, through it, much of the country's judiciary and law enforcement. An ACUM-Socialist coalition was the only way to break Plahotniuc's hold on power. Sometimes you make deals with people you don't trust to defeat people you trust even less.

Sandu became prime minister on June 8, 2019. The Constitutional Court immediately declared her appointment unconstitutional, sparking a brief constitutional crisis. A week later, the court reversed itself, and Sandu's government was recognized as legitimate.

Her time in office was marked by immediate action. She lifted a ban on government officials visiting Russia—a pragmatic gesture toward the Socialist coalition partners. She announced plans to request that the United States Treasury add Plahotniuc to the Magnitsky List, which would freeze his assets and ban him from entering the country. She proposed declaring August 23 as a day of remembrance for victims of Stalinism and Nazism, replacing the Soviet-era Liberation Day—a symbolic move that her Socialist partners rejected.

The coalition lasted five months. On November 12, 2019, the Socialists joined with other parties to pass a vote of no confidence, ostensibly over Sandu's attempt to change how prosecutors were appointed. The real issue was power: the Socialists had used the coalition to dislodge Plahotniuc, and now they no longer needed their pro-European partners.

The 2020 Victory

Sandu announced her second presidential campaign in July 2020. This time, she argued, there was no need for a unified pro-European candidate—she was confident enough in her own support to run alone.

She launched her campaign in October, giving speeches in both Romanian and Russian. Her platform was familiar: fight corruption, fight poverty, reform the criminal justice system. But she also had a specific target: President Dodon, whom she accused of deliberately blocking judicial reform.

The first round of voting didn't produce a majority winner, setting up another Sandu-Dodon runoff. This time, Sandu won decisively: 57.75 percent to Dodon's 42.25 percent. It was a landslide by Moldovan standards.

Congratulations poured in from European leaders and from the presidents of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Romania. Sandu struck a carefully balanced tone, promising "real balance in foreign policy" and "pragmatic dialogue with all countries, including Romania, Ukraine, European nations, Russia, and the United States."

On December 24, 2020—Christmas Eve in much of the West—Sandu was sworn in at the Palace of the Republic. Thousands of supporters gathered outside, chanting "Maia Sandu and the people!" Before taking office, she had suspended her membership in PAS, following the convention that presidents should be above party politics.

Governing a Divided Country

Winning the presidency was one thing. Governing was another. Sandu faced a parliament still controlled by her opponents, and the next months became a grinding battle over the prime ministership.

She nominated Natalia Gavrilița, an economist who had served in her brief government, as prime minister. Parliament rejected her. Sandu nominated her again. The Constitutional Court declared the re-nomination unconstitutional. Socialists and other parties proposed their own candidate, Mariana Durleșteanu, a former ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Sandu refused to back down. "The only way for Moldova to move forward is to organize new parliamentary elections," she insisted. She was betting that if she could force early elections, her party would win a parliamentary majority.

The standoff continued through early 2021. Durleșteanu eventually withdrew her candidacy, perhaps recognizing that even if confirmed, she would face a president determined to undermine her. Sandu nominated Igor Grosu, another PAS figure, in what appeared to be a move designed to trigger either snap elections or an impeachment process.

The gamble paid off. In July 2021, snap elections gave PAS a commanding majority in parliament—63 of 101 seats. Gavrilița finally became prime minister. For the first time, Sandu had both the presidency and a supportive parliamentary majority. The question was what she would do with it.

Russia's War and Moldova's Choice

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. For Moldova, this was not an abstract geopolitical event. Ukraine is Moldova's neighbor; the two countries share a border of more than 1,200 kilometers. And Moldova has its own Russian-backed separatist territory: Transnistria, a sliver of land along the Ukrainian border where Russian troops have been stationed since the early 1990s.

Sandu's response was unambiguous. She condemned Russia's invasion and expressed support for Ukraine. Her government moved to reduce Moldova's dependence on Russian energy, a significant challenge for a country that had long relied on cheap Russian gas. She also pursued accelerated European integration, and in June 2022, Moldova was granted candidate status for European Union membership—a historic step.

In February 2023, Sandu made an extraordinary accusation: Russia, she claimed, was planning to stage a coup to overthrow her government. She presented evidence that Russian agents were working to destabilize Moldova, using everything from disinformation to organized crime networks.

Whether or not a literal coup was imminent, the accusation reflected a genuine reality. Russia had every reason to want Sandu gone. She represented everything Moscow opposed: Western integration, anti-corruption reform, and resistance to Russian influence. Her government had become, in effect, a test case for whether a small, poor, post-Soviet country could escape Russia's orbit.

The 2024 Referendum and Re-election

In October 2024, Moldova held both a presidential election and a constitutional referendum on European Union membership. The referendum asked voters whether they wanted to enshrine EU integration as a constitutional goal.

Both votes were marred by what Sandu and European observers described as unprecedented foreign interference. Sandu claimed that 150,000 votes had been bought, with a target of 300,000. The European Union stated that the elections had taken place "under unprecedented interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies."

The referendum passed, but just barely—the "Yes" vote won by a margin so narrow it shocked even supporters of European integration. Sandu won the first round of the presidential election with 42 percent of the vote, forcing a runoff against Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general backed by the Socialists.

In the campaign, Sandu called Stoianoglo a "Trojan horse" for foreign interests. "Joining the European Union is Moldova's Marshall Plan," she declared, invoking the American program that rebuilt Western Europe after World War II.

She won the runoff with 55.35 percent of the vote. In her victory speech, she framed the result in dramatic terms: "Moldova, you are victorious! Today, dear Moldovans, you have given a lesson in democracy, worthy of being written in history books. Today, you have saved Moldova."

The Road Ahead

As of late 2024, Maia Sandu remains the most trusted politician in Moldova, polling at 26 percent—not a commanding number in absolute terms, but the highest in a country where public cynicism about politics runs deep. Her former rival Igor Dodon trails at 19 percent.

Moldova's path to European Union membership remains long and uncertain. The country is one of the poorest in Europe. Corruption, while diminished under Sandu's leadership, remains endemic. Transnistria continues to exist as a frozen conflict, a Russian-backed statelet that Moldova cannot control but cannot abandon. And Russia's war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending, leaving Moldova in a permanent state of geopolitical anxiety.

But something has changed. A country that spent decades wavering between East and West has made a choice—not just in a referendum, but in the repeated election of a leader who represents a clear direction. Maia Sandu may not be able to deliver everything she has promised. The forces arrayed against her, both domestic and foreign, are formidable. But she has demonstrated that it is possible, in a small country with a troubled history, to build a political movement around competence, integrity, and a vision of a different future.

That, in the end, may be her most lasting achievement: not any particular policy or reform, but the proof that such a politics is possible.