Sunday's presidential election is seen as a vote on whether the country looks east to Russia or west to the EU.
“I’m not aware of anywhere else where we’ve seen such a brazen and open attempt to corrupt an election,” Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin, told me this week in her office in Chisinau.
We’re talking about a foreign country sending money in an attempt to influence the election,” Ms Dragalin spells it out. She details evidence gained through wiretaps, police infiltrators and witnesses – some of which her office has made public.
How can the result of this referendum ever be legitimate anymore?
The issue is not the legitimacy but the perception of legitimacy. When there is only one "correct" electoral outcome, it raises the question of why you have elections at all.