The Central Election Commission (CEC) on March 18 approved of the registration of the people’s initiative group that will start a national referendum to amend the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, Info-Prim Neo reports. Though the registration of the group was approved, CEC pointed to a series of deviations and mistakes while examining the set of documents submitted by the authors of the project. The violations concerned the way in which the signatory persons were registered. CEC said that about 300 signatories put by the people that wanted to be registered as members of the initiative group cannot be accepted and considered valid. According to the rapporteur Iurie Ciocan, after examining the documents, it was established that the lists of members of the initiative group was drawn up with mistakes and their statements were inaccurate. Ciocan said that the identity data of 181 people written in the list did not correspond to the data from the identity card. The identification papers of 119 persons were invalid or the number of the identity card was not written on the list. However, about 1,146 persons were registered as members of the initiative group. Seven members of the Central Election Commission voted in favor of registering the initiative group. One of the CEC representatives, Nicolae Garbu, said he is against because the initiative to initiate the referendum is illegal. He put forward an alternative draft initiative for amending the Constitution. After considering his proposal, most of the CEC members rejected it and approved the project put up by PLDM. After approving the registration of the initiative group, CEC set a deadline by which the signatures of the supporters of the national constitutional referendum should be collected. From March 24 until June 23, 2008, the project authors in concert with the initiative group members will have to collect 200,000 signatures. Afterwards, the signatures will be verified by CEC and the project on the amendment of the Constitution will be submitted to the Constitutional Court for examination. On February 23, 2008, the Liberal Democratic Party (PLDM) constituted an initiative group to initiate a nationwide referendum for amending the stipulations of the Constitution regarding the election of the President of Moldova and the members of Parliament. PLDM proposes modifying the Constitution so that the President is elected directly by the people and not by the Parliament, as it is done at present. The party also suggests introducing a mixed electoral system so that 51 MPs are elected in a single national constituency (as they are elected now) and 50 MPs – in uninominal constituencies.