The centrist opposition Bloc for Democratic Moldova took 28.4 percent while the Popular Christian Democratic Party won 9.7 percent, said the committee.

Only these three parties managed to garner enough votes to enter the 101-member parliament. A party must get six percent of the vote to win seats in parliament.

The results must still be confirmed and published before they are considered official.

The Communist Party, under President Vladimir Voronin, is likely to get 57 seats, four short of the 61 -- three-fifths of the seats -- needed to re-elect the president outright.

A senior official from the party told Xinhua that the party is considering forming some sort of alliance with the other two parties to strive for the five crucial seats.

A total of 11 independent candidates and nine political partiescontested the parliamentary poll. About 2.4 million Moldovans were eligible to vote on Sunday and the turnout was 63.7 percent.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which monitored the election was reported by the AFP news agency as saying Monday that despite some flaws, it was generally well-run.

The election was "generally in compliance with most OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and other international election standards," Kimmo Kiljunen, head of the OSCE's mission of observers, was quoted as saying. Some 770 foreign observers monitored the elections.

Moldova is considered one of the poorest countries in Europe with about one-third of the four million population living on about one US dollar per day.