Civil society on June 11 mounts a protest in the square of the Parliament Building against the modification of the electoral system. The protesters will demand that the Democratic Party (PDM) should stop promoting the initiative on the uninominal voting system, while the Party of Socialists (PSRM) should give up its bill on the mixed-member electoral system.
Executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Arcadie Barbarosie, in a news conference at IPN on May 20, said the PDM and PSRM merged the two legislative initiatives, seriously violating the parliamentary norms. The mixed-member system is an attack on democracy in the Republic of Moldova, which is rather weak, while the uninominal voting system will enable only the political parties with administrative and financial resources to enter Parliament. “I invite you all to the square of the Parliament Building to demand that the bills on the uninominal voting systems and mixed-member electoral systems should be annulled. We will demand that the current party-based proportional representation system should be cleaned, improved and used further,” stated Arcadie Barbarosie.
Dumitru Alaiba, programs director at the Center for Politics and Reforms, called on the state institutions, especially the Ministry of the Interior, not to restrict the access of the people who want to come from districts to the protest. “On May 14, the state violated the people’s right to assembly. At each 30 km, the route drivers were stopped and checked if they do not take people to the protest. Some of these were fined because they were by 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The train routes were suspended. Such things happen every time protests against the regime are held in Chisinau,” said Dumitru Alaiba.
Vladislav Gribincea, head of the Legal Resources Center, noted that the PDM collected signatures from people in support of the dismissal of MPs who do not fulfill their duties, but this becomes impossible following the merger of the Democrats’ bill with the Socialists’ initiative. “The European Parliament tells us that the bill is bad. The experience of Romania and Ukraine confirms that such changes lead only to greater voter corruption and worsening of the democratic situation in the country. The PDM and PSRM go on. I don’t think that the whole nation can be fooled,” he stated.
Expert Sergiu Tofilat insisted that the new protest is staged not to allow Moldova to be transformed into an authoritarian state. “We must be firm against the attempts by the PDM and PSRM to steal our elections and to maintain Plahotniuc in power for many years in the future. It is our duty to defend our country,” said Tofilat.
According to analyst Alexei Tulbure, the replacement of the electoral system is aimed at ensuring the entry into Moldova’s Parliament of a discredited party that wants to push the state towards dictatorship in the heart of Europe. “By the June 11 protest, we continue to put up resistance to the anti-democratic processes promoted by the oligarchic clan “Plahotniuc”. Come to contribute to the freeing of the state from political control,” said Alexei Tulbure.
Several thousand people protested against the change in the electoral system in central Chisinau on May 14, 2017.
