The Central Election Commission (CEC) stuck to the letter of the law when it decided to request the Chisinau Appeals Court to exclude the Party “Patria” (“Motherland”) from the electoral race and wasn’t influenced politically, the Commission’s president Iurie Ciocan said in the program “Politics” on TV 7 channel, IPN reports.
According to Iurie Ciocan, this decision wasn’t prepared earlier and was taken on November 26, after representatives of the police presented evidence of the foreign financing received by this party. “There are proofs that the Party “Patria” was financed from outside and it didn’t declare the money used in the election campaign. The evidence was provided to us today and today we took the decision. It wasn’t prepared earlier as we didn’t know about the foreign financing got by this party. No politician phoned us to tell us what to do. We had to take such a decision as we must obey the law. We also followed the procedure,” he stated.
Iurie Ciocan noted that the proofs are more than sufficient for the Party “Patria” to be removed from the electoral race and the judgment will be fair. “We will comply with the decision of the Appeals Court. Under the legislation, the CEC can remove a runner from the electoral race only based on a definitive court decision,” he said.
In the same connection, the CEC president stated that the decision taken by the Commission on November 26 wasn’t influenced by the searches performed at the homes of activists of the movement “Antifa”. “I heard that searches were carried out and that evidence was found showing that they intended to occupy the head office of the CEC. Now I understood why the law enforcement bodies had intensified security at the CEC. Pavel Grigorciuc, who often came to destabilize the situation at the CEC, attacked members of the Commission, including me. But this has nothing to do with the decision concerning the Party “Patria”,“ said Iurie Ciocan.
