The leadership of the European Action Movement (MAE) considers that the arrogant and illegal behaviour of the police during the MAE’s picket of the Presidential Office on February 13 is inadmissible. A relevant statement was made public at a news conference on February 14, Info-Prim Neo reports. The statement says that the members and sympathisers of the MAE protested against President Vladimir Voronin’s anti-European anti-Romania policy and pleaded fort Moldova’s accession to NATO. The picket was held in strict compliance with the Chisinau Mayor General‘s order that allows the protesters to hold the picket at a distance of 50 metres from the Presidential Office and says that the General Police Department should provide all the necessary support to the protesters. As the place that was 50 metres of the Presidential Office was in the middle of the boulevard, the protesters held the picket on the opposite side of the road, the distance from the Presidential Office being much longer. Ignoring the legislative provisions and the mayor’s order, the vice police commissioner and head of the Municipal Police Iacob Gumenita demanded that the picketers change the place of the protest and mistreated the event’s organisers. The statement also says that Gumenita violated the right to free expression of the picket participants provided in article 184 of the Penal Code of Moldova and that MAE will make everything possible not to admit the full transformation of Moldova into a conformist and outdated police state. The MAE member, MP Zoia Jalba said that not only the police manifested itself during the protest. The special services tried to cause a conflict by sending a group of people with an anti-NATO placard to protest near the picketers. The MAE members asked the police to drive them away. After the picket, Zoia Jalba saw two members of this group on the stairs of the Parliament’s building reporting to a radio station on their “activity” during the Movement’s protest. The cited source says that the event was staged by order of Vladimir Voronin, who supervises everything in this country and that the shaky democracy in Moldova is moving towards anarchy and even monarchy. The MP also said that Voronin and the obedient doers must realise that the young people know towards where they go and will not accept the imposed model anymore. The MAE member Andrei Covrig, veteran of the Independence War, said that the time has come for the society to challenge the activity of the Ministry of the Interior and of the policemen that show that Moldova became a police state by their arrogant behavior and by ignoring the legislation. Covrig expressed his indignation at the way in which the public broadcaster headed by Valentin Todercan treated the subject of picketing and said that the broadcaster and the police are divisions of the Communist Party’s central committee. Another MAE, member, Mariana Taranu, said that she is shocked by the behaviour of certain representatives of mass media that treated the event very subjectively and tried to find out information that would discredit the leadership of MAE from the young protesters. The MAE president Anatol Petrencu said that the party’s jurist is studying the materials and examining the possibility of holding Iacob Gumenita accountable in compliance with article 184 of the Penal Code of Moldova. So far, the police took legal action against several of the picket organisers. Under article 184, a persons or more persons holding important positions that infringe the right to assembly by illegally hindering the holding of the meeting, protest, demonstration or any other event or bare the people from taking part in them is punished with fine of 200 to 400 conventional units (4,000-8,000 lei), community service for 180 to 240 hours or imprisonment of up to two years.