Speaker: We will find more than the eight votes we need to elect a President

Newly-elected Speaker Mihai Ghimpu told Radio France Internationale that the Alliance for European Integration would manage to find more than eight Communist votes to elect a head of state.

The Moldovan Parliament elects the President with 61 votes out of 101. The Alliance only has 53 seats, and the additional support can only come from the Party of Communists.

Mr. Ghimpu added that many Communists would vote for the President because if early elections occur in 2010, "more than half of the Communists in Parliament today will not return to the legislature, so I am convinced that the people who are 47th or 48th, the ones at the bottom of the list, will be in deep thought."

The Party of Communists has 48 M.P.s in the new legislature.

h/t www.unimedia.md