The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections described the parliamentary elections held on February 24 as unfair and partially free. The appraisal was made by assessing the degree to which the principles of free and fair elections were respected by all the election runners and based on the findings concerning the pre-electoral and electoral periods and the election day.
In a news conference at IPN, executive director of the Association for Participatory Democracy ADEPT Igor Boțan said the amendments to the legal framework were made in a harry and non-transparently, ignoring the legal provisions regarding the transparency of the decision-making process. This enabled to use administrative resources and, respectively, influenced the election outcome. The pre-electoral and electoral periods and the election day were marked by voter corruption activities, conducted also through the agency of charitable foundations affiliated to parties. These included offering of illegal presents, the activity of social stores and transportation of voters to polling places in an organized way.
Sorina Macrinici, programs director at the Legal Resources Center, said the Moldovan citizens abroad had the right to vote and the right to file challenges limited. These could not vote based on the identity card that should be held mandatorily and with expired passports, even if the Supreme Court of Justice in 2014 ascertained the legality of the previous CEC decision to allow voting with expired identity cards. The sudden change by the Central Election Commission of the about ten-year practice of voting based on expired identity cards, without properly informing the citizens beforehand, substantially reduced the people’s right to vote. The CEC and the electoral bodies abroad failed to ensure the right to file challenges of the Moldovans overseas.
Ion Manole, director of “Promo-LEX” Association, said the State Register of Voters and the voter rolls contained mistakes, such as the incorrect address and dissimilar lists for one and the same territorial-administrative unit. Dead persons were put on the register of voters. The artificial migration of voters from one single-member constituency to another is also among the violations. The legislative body failed to adjust the legislation to the recommendations of the Venice Commission and GRECO concerning the financing of parties and election campaigns. Even if the ceiling for financing election campaigns in 2017 was reduced to 50 and 100 average official salaries for private individuals and, respectively, for legal entities, the limit of donations remains above the one recommended by the GRECO, of 20 and, respectively, 40 average official salaries.
Executive director of the Independent Journalism Center Nadine Gogu said most of the important media outlets covered the election campaign in a biased way, treating the election contestants unequally and discriminatorily. Several electoral contenders benefitted from a massive presence and an exclusively positive tone on some of the monitored TV channels, while their political opponents were presented in a negative context. Some of the TV channels staged electors debates not in prime time, but early in the morning, when the audience in minimal. The delayed investigation of these situations by the Broadcasting Coordination Council didn’t allow appropriately punishing and swiftly counteracting the biased behavior of media outlets.
As to the representation of women, the young people, Roma people and persons with disabilities in elections, Andrei Brighidin, the expert of East Europe Foundation, said these categories of persons continue to be underrepresented. Even if the women representation quota of 40% on the list of parties in the national constituency was respected, the principle of equally of chances for men and women is undermined. Most of the women were placed on less eligible places for the seat of MP.
Valeriu Drăgălin, president of the National Youth Council of Moldova, said most of the young candidates were put at the end of the lists and this is a practice already. What he noticed is that not many parties focused their programs on the young people, the interests and needs of these not being covered by the electoral platforms.
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.
