The president of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Alina Russu said on January 31 it will become known how many electoral contenders will run in the parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019. The time limit for submissions expired on January 24 and the CEC within seven days is to examine the last submitted applications, IPN reports.

“There will be not more than 15 competitors in the national constituency,” stated Alina Russu, referring to the fact that applications for registering 15 parties had been filed and nine of the parties were already registered.

As regards financial reporting by the participants in elections, Alina Russu said there are three categories of penalties. The electoral body can impose penalties in the form of warning. If the electoral contender is issued with two such warnings, the allocation of subsidies from the state budget can be suspended. There are also penalties for contravention and penal departures.

As to the consultative referendum, Alina Russu said that besides the two parties registered as participants in the plebiscite, the CEC also received the applications of four more parties that will be examined the next days. “We are examining an application by which one party asked to be allowed to participate with the option “for” for one question and with the option “against” for the second question,” stated the functionary.

Pavel Postică, programs director at Promo-Lex Association, said mainly representatives of parties announced their intention to run in single-member constituencies and there are rather few independents. “25% of the 401 initiative groups support independent candidates. It is regrettable that not many of them managed to collect signatures by January 22. What is evident now is that the political parties, either we want it or not, being organized institutions, cope better with the challenge of collecting signatures,” he stated.

According to Pavel Postică, of the 101 possible independent candidates in single-member constituencies, only 13 were registered. Only two parties fielded candidates in all the single-member constituencies.

The programs director at Promo-Lex Association noted that the intermediary monitoring report presented on January 24 shows about 140 initiative groups didn’t present financial reports to the CEC and it is not known how they collected signatures without spending money. “We try to reveal such things so that the voters have a picture of those who do not spend money transparently as these can come to power shortly and will spend public funds,” he stated.