Zinaida Greceanîi

Zinaida Greceanîi (born 7 February 1956; Russian: Зинаида Петровна Гречаная, Zinaida Petrovna Grechanaya) is a Moldovan politician who was the Prime Minister of Moldova from 31 March 2008 to 14 September 2009. She is a member of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova and was previously a member of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova. She was Moldova's first female Prime Minister and was the second female Communist head of government in Europe, the first having been Premier Milka Planinc of Yugoslavia.

Greceanîi was born at Tomsk Oblast in Siberia in the Russian SFSR of the Soviet Union. Her parents, Marioara Ursu (1918–1993) and Petrea Bujor (1906–1996), were deported in 1951 from Cotiujeni in the north of Moldova during the Operation North because they were Jehovah's Witnesses. Her brother died during the deportation. Zinaida Greceanîi and her parents come back in Cotiujeni only in 1968. She was baptised as Orthodox by her grandmother on mother's side.

She graduated from the Financial and Economic College in the capital Chișinău and the State University of Moldova.

Greceanîi is married to Alexei Greceanîi and has two children.

She was Deputy Minister of Finances from 2000 to 2001 and First Deputy Minister of Finances from 2001 to 2002. President Vladimir Voronin appointed her as Interim Minister of Finances on 8 February 2002 and then appointed her as Minister of Finances on 26 February 2002 as the only woman in the cabinet. After serving as Finance Minister for more than three years, she was appointed by Voronin as First Deputy Prime Minister of Moldova on 10 October 2005. In the summer, she arrived first in the 2005 Chișinău election, but they were declared invalid because of the low turnout.

Following the resignation of Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev on 19 March 2008, President Vladimir Voronin nominated Greceanîi as Prime Minister. The Cabinet of Zinaida Greceanîi was approved by Parliament on 31 March; it received 56 votes in favor out of the 101 members of Parliament. According to Greceanîi, the immediate focus of her Cabinet would on "freedom of the media, an active dialogue with civil society and an independent judiciary". She increased the number of women ministers from 2 to 5 (25 per cent) and followed up on laws of gender equality.

Greceanii resigned on 9 September 2009, saying she was unable to simultaneously hold the posts of prime minister and member of parliament at the same time. On 10 September 2009, Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin signed a decree appointing Justice Minister Vitalie Pîrlog as acting Prime Minister from 14 September until a new government was formed.

Her party won the April 2009 election with 49.48% of the vote and she won one of the 60 seats of the PCRM in the Moldovan Parliament. She was twice an unsuccessful candidate of the PCRM for the post of the President of Moldova, on 20 May and 3 June 2009, lacking only one vote to obtain the required 3/5 (61) of the votes. In both rounds, alternative male candidates were also nominated by the PCRM and obtained 0 votes and Greceanîi all 60 Communist party votes.

New elections were held and after the July 2009 parliamentary election, Greceanîi again won a seat in the Moldovan Parliament, but the PCRM only got 48 seats and the opposition to the Communist Party, the Alliance for European Integration, agreed to create a governing coalition.

She contested the mayoralty of Chișinău at the 2015 local elections, where she progressed to a run-off against incumbent Dorin Chirtoacă. Ultimately she was unsuccessful, losing to Chirtoacă 46.56% to 53.46% on June 28.