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Voters favoring independence put Smirnov ahead of pro-unification rival Safonov and two other opposition candidates

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - According to exit polls made by the Novy Vek (New Century) independent analytical research center, incumbent PMR president Igor Smirnov, who has been elected to presidency thrice, is far ahead of his rivals – local parliament deputy Peter Tomaily and opposition newspapers’ editors in chief Andrey Safonov and Nadezhda Bondarenko.

With most of the vote count still underway, no preliminary results are available yet.

A repeated Smirnov-win will come as no surprise to independent analysts and political observers who for the past several months predicted reelection of the incumbent president.

" - Igor Smirnov's party is not that popular, and last year one of his ministers was caught in a corruption scandal. But the personal popularity of the president has remained high," says columnist and political commentator Michael Garner, "and among the four candidates, voters see him as the man who will stand up for independence. This is a very strong theme here, where any talk of unification with Moldova was recently ruled out by 94% of the population."

Of the four candidates for president, three - including Igor Smirnov - are strong defenders of the continuation of the de facto independence of Pridnestrovie (PMR) as a separate country. One, Andrey Safonov, the owner of the largest opposition newspaper, has called for Pridnestrovie to form a federation with Moldova.

Exit polling indicate that Igor Smirnov may finish with 60% to 63% of the vote, with Communist party candidate Bondarenko finishing second, with around 10% and Safonov with slightly less, followed by the last-place finish of Peter Tomaily with under 2% of voter support. These numbers do not add up to 100% due some voters who declined to let pollsters know who they voted for.

Wants to leave when independence is secured

On Friday, the BBC reported that incumbent President Igor Smirnov was tipped to win five more years in power. German and American reporter also predicted a success for Smirnov as the most likely, with one analyst reported as saying "it is ridiculous to speculate on whether there was fraud, because Igor Smirnov is so popular that he does not need to commit fraud to win. He is the leader that the people want, and we have to respect that. If he wins again, which is very likely, then it is simply up to us to work with him."

Smirnov, 65, is a former factory worker who opposed a first ran for public office in the waning days of the Soviet Union, beating the official Communist Party candidate 2 to 1. He led a series of trade union strikes and was elected to the MSSR parliament for the region East of the Dniester river, opposing official Communist party candidates, and was among the founding fathers who declared the independence of Pridnestrovie on 2 September 1990.

He has publicly stated that he would like to leave politics, but that he wants to make sure that the new and emerging country will stay independent and that he first want to see it obtain international recognition.

Despite meeting the requirements for statehood under international law, and having its own flag, currency, constitution and democratically elected parliament, Pridnestrovie (also known alternately as Transnistria or Transdniester) has not yet obtained international recognition of its sovereignty. This is due to an unresolved territorial claim by Moldova, which also declared its independence albeit one year after Pridnestrovie had already done so.

Please note: Exit polls are notoriously unreliable and should only be used as indicators of a trend and not as representative of the final result. Much depends on the methodology of exit polling, and Tiraspol Times had no access to the underlying dataset of the particular exit poll which is being referenced in this article.

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