The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections that classed the parliamentary elections held on February 24 as unfair and partially free is to formulate a series of recommendations for improving the electoral legislation. Representatives of the Coalition said they will communicate with political parties and state institutions so as to remove the identified shortcomings.
The Coalition ascertained that administrative resources were used in the election campaign prior to the parliamentary elections and voters were corrupted. The rights to vote and file challenges of the Moldovans abroad were limited. Mistakes and deficiencies were identified in the State Register of Voters and the voter rolls and the mass-media was controlled politically. The women, young people, persons with disabilities and persons of Roma ethnicity were underrepresented and national observers were intimidated.
In a news conference at IPN, Igor Boțan, executive director of the Association for Participatory Democracy ADEPT, said the mixed electoral system in Moldova’s case generated a situation when a party that ranked third at national level won the elections in most of the single-member constituencies. “The given party promoted the mixed system and promised the people that they will renew the political class, but actually promoted district heads and affiliated mayors in single-member constituencies and these used administrative resources in the election campaign,” he stated, adding he saw how signatures were collected for particular election contenders in the campaign and how these election contestants faced nothing event if they broke the law.
Ion Manole, director of “Promo-LEX” Association, said that attempts were made to intimidate national observers and to compromise the civic education campaigns. Something like this occurred for the first time after 2009. Representatives of civil society were intimidated and groundlessly accused by the electoral authorities and local public authorities, while some of the CEC members and representatives of parties actually censored the activity of the observation mission of Promo-LEX. “For the first time, the observation mission was somehow followed, especially some of our observers. The mission was subject to attacks and intimidation. We held meetings with the CEC and election runners to them explain our methodology and the fact that during the past ten years since Promo-LEX started to monitor the elections it followed the same procedures and did nothing special this time as well. However, the observers were ultimately banned from communicating their election day findings to the public,” stated Ion Manole.
Independent Journalism Center executive director Nadine Gogu said the media outlets mainly failed to correctly and impartially cover the election campaign and didn’t ensure the electoral contenders’ access to the media and also didn’t ensure the media consumers’ right to correct and balanced information. “Those media consumers that had access only ton some of the TV channels could not vote in an informed wait as they were deprived of comprehensive information. Not all the election contestants could state their opinions on their electoral platforms,” noted Nadine Gogu.
East Europe Foundation expert Andrei Brighidin said the interests of the underrepresented groups, such as persons with disabilities and those of Roma ethnicity, were seldom covered by the platforms of election runners. In single-member constituencies, only 20% of the candidates were women. None of the candidates addressed the specific problems faced by the Roma people and only three contenders presented not very exhaustive information about the promotion of persons with disabilities in elections.
The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections consists of 39 public organizations with activities in areas related to the electoral law. The Coalition promotes free and fair elections in accordance with the standards of the ODIHR/OSCE, the Council of Europe and affiliated specialized institutions.
