Moldova needs another kind of civil society, which would involve more people in specialized professional organizations and would function as an instrument of control over governance or would even take over a part of the duties of the government. The independent institutions managed by the government must learn to make the best use of the mechanisms they possess. Regretfully, neither the independent institutions of the state nor civil society profit from the modern and favorable legal framework existing in the country. Such opinions were stated in the debate “Society’s control leverage on the government before, during and after elections: traditions, local practices and European standards”, which is the 35th of the series of debates “Development of political culture in public debates”, staged by IPN News Agency and Radio Moldova. The debate involved Prime Minister Iurie Leanca and the project’s permanent expert Igor Botan, executive director of the Association for Participatory Democracy.
“Unfortunately, our society still believes that the government is responsible for everything and this is not good because we want to built a state where the powers are separated,” said Iurie Leanca. He noted that in an advanced society, the role of the government is reduced and its main concern is to create favorable conditions for the work of the specialized institutions and civil society.
“The legal framework is very and very good because it was worked out with the support of European experts. We are now at the phase when we must implement it and problems appear here because these institutions are not ready to implement the mechanisms they possess and meet with resistance on the part of our judiciary, which, in several cases, already rejected the decisions of the Competition Council and this has a non-beneficial effect.”
“The government must be like an interface with active ports to which civil society, the interested elements, can connect themselves and can send signals that what the authorities do is good or bad. Control will then exist. If this does not exist, we will always complain and will blame the government,” said Igor Botan.
“From legislative viewpoint and given the context existing now in Moldova, there are a lot of things or a majority of important things that offer control leverage over the power. Society and its active elements, the elements of civil society, are a problem as they didn’t learn to use these instruments.”
According to Igor Botan, the lack of specialized NGOs that would consist of competent people from a certain area and would monitor the activity of the government in this area, is another problem. “We have a series of NGOs that consider they are expert in all the issues and they address them. They consider they are civil society. This is absurd. Civic society does not have conscience. It is a mosaic. The expectations were always for the people who can to organize themselves into groups to defend their interests, such as the teachers, farmers, exporters, fuel consumers and so on. They are competent in an area and can be partners of the regulatory institutions, the government and of the control bodies of Parliament,” he stated.
The November 19 debate is the 35th of the series of debates “Development of political culture in public debates”. IPN holds such debates the third year with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation and in cooperation with Radio Moldova.
