The electoral competitors of the People’s Movement Antimafie, Our Party (PPPN), the Shor Party and the National Liberal Party (PNL) promise that if they enter the next Parliament, they will implement great plans to improve people’s lives. Among the priorities of the four parties are to root out corruption, to implement social programs that refer to different sections of society and to ensure Moldova’s union with Romania. Candidates of the parties spoke about the priorities of their electoral programs and the stake of the upcoming parliamentary elections in the public debate “Elections 2019: Please elect me MP because...”, which was the 102nd installment of the series “Developing political culture through public debates” staged by IPN News Agency on January 31, 2019.

Daniela Bodrug, of Antimafie Movement, said the party she represents designed a program to build the Union Republic. Through this, the party wants the people to feel that the politicians allowed them to develop themselves as the citizens have capacities and force to develop small and medium-sized businesses and can return home with foreign capital and develop businesses in the country.

“The most important thing is that we, as a liberal party that values the freedom of people and the people as individuals, the rule of law and the freedom to choose, aim to build a minimal state. A minimal state means that this will have only control and punishment duties. For the purpose, we need a justice system that will be a cohesive instrument for ensuring the rule of law, that will have the duty to ensure that the contracts in the state are respected, the banks robbers and criminals serve time in jail so that we educate the people according to the Western cultural model,” stated Daniela Bodrug, who runs in the national constituency on behalf of Antimafie Movement.

If it enters Parliament, Antimafie will also do its best for the Moldovan citizens to learn very well the Romanian language, at literary level, especially those who work at education institutions. English will be a priority language in all the public areas so that society meets not only the living, but also the thinking and language standards of the West. Russian is no longer the language of technologies and is not even the language of trade, but is the language of our disastrous past, noted Daniela Bodrug.

Another priority of the party is to submit a legislative proposal providing that the parties will be financed not with donations and the contributions of mafias, but only with state subsidies, depending on the results achieved in elections.

Ilian Cașu, of the PPPN, said the fight against corruption by the model implemented by the Balti mayor’s office is the Our Party’s priority. “We will gradually clear the state of this metastasis of corruption that is directly related to Vladimir Plahotniuc’s regime,” stated the candidate of the PPPN.

Ensuring a fair and correct justice system is another priority of the party. According to the candidate, this is a widespread principle – equality before the law. However, those who are in power should respect this principle first of all as they are models of how the legislation should be obeyed for the ordinary people and can then demand that the people should also obey the law.

The Shor Party’s candidate Marina Tauber said Moldova now faces a lot of problems and the party she represents prepared a set of relevant measures and social projects that it piloted at the local level in Orhei and Jora de Mijloc. A social project envisions the provision of allowances of 7,000 lei and 10,000 lei on the birth of a child. “The social stores are the main project of the Shor Party. After the parliamentary elections, we will vote a special status for these stores,” stated Marina Tauber, who runs in the national constituency.

The politician noted one of the Shor Party’s programs envision the allocation of at least 1,000 lei to each person for food prods and the raising of the pension to at least 5,000 lei. They will also create social stores where the medicines will be much cheaper. Such a drugstores works successfully in Orhei and another one will be soon opened in Jora de Mijloc. The party will also provide special dwellings for young specialists who will pay by 500 lei a month for them and will become their owners in 35 years.

Vitalia Pavlichenko, of the PNL, said the party has a very concrete plan of action that focuses on the preparations for Moldova’s union with Romania. If other unionist parties also enter Parliament, the PNL will launch the reunification program. “If not, we will maximally bring the situation in the Republic of Moldova in all the areas closer to the situation in Romania,” stated the politician, who runs in the national constituency.

“We will first of all set up a parliamentary commissions that will be headed by Alexandra Can, who was an upright minister and is a honest, non-blackmailable and honest person. The commission will work to determine where the stolen billions that are now used to give alms to buy voters went. It will investigate the banking fraud.”

Vitalia Pavlichenko said the PNL will also intensely promote a lustration law as the Republic of Moldova has been stagnant for almost 28 years because it has been managed by persons infiltrated from different areas, especially from Moscow, who promote values that are foreign to the Romanian nation, to the Romanian, European democratic future. The party will plead for withdrawing from the Commonwealth of Independent States. It has many other concrete projects that refer to the National Army, the Ministry of the Interior, the cooperation with Romania’s national Anticorruption Directorate and the association of the exchange rate of the national currency with the Romanian leu.

The electoral contenders are invited to the electoral debates held by IPN Agency in accordance with the order in which they were registered by the Central Election Commission. The debates on January 30 involved representatives of the electoral bloc ACUM, the Party of Communists and the Party of Socialists. The Democratic Party didn’t respond to the invitation to attend the debate.

Candidates of the People’s Will Party, the Party of Regions of Moldova, the Party “Democracy at Home” and the Professionals’ Movement “Speranța-Nadejda” confirmed their participation in the debate scheduled for February 4.

The series of debates “Elections 2019: Please elect me MP because...”, forms part of the series of public debates held by IPN News Agency as part of the project “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.