The next make-up of Parliament produced by the February 24 elections could be the “dirtiest possible”. The journalist Vitalie Calugareanu says he came to this conclusion after examining detailed information about the candidates as part of an ample journalistic profiling effort called “Clean Parliament”.

“I am very disappointed by the moral worth of the politicians running in this race. I think this will the the dirtiest parliament possible”, Călugăreanu said during Natalia Morari’s political talk-show on TV8.

According to him, this Sunday vote will be extremely important for the future of this country. “It is crucial that everybody becomes conscious of the responsibility of being a citizen and stops voting for people who lie, who steal and who hate this country with all their guts”, stated Călugăreanu.

Journalist Lilia Zaharia said that while working on the Clean Parliament project her fellow journalists faced hurdles and threats from candidates. “I’m talking in particular the threats against the Investigative Journalism Center’s Mariana Colun, when a Socialist candidate posted offensive and threatening remarks on social media. As far as I know, the authorities haven’t reacted in any way, despite complaints filed by the Investigative Journalism Center with a number of institutions”.

Another obstacle during the profiling effort, as noted by Lilia Zaharia, was the reluctance of the National Integrity Authority to collaborate. “The Authority, like many other institutions, request journalists to file inquiries under the Petitioning Law procedure, which sets a (maximum) limit of 30 workdays for a response. But the whole campaign lasts just 30 calendar days.”

The profiles of most candidates running in single-member constituencies can be examined on the website moldovacurata.md.