The former acting mayor of Chisinau municipality Ruslan Codreanu, who intended to run independently in last autumn’s mayoral elections, but wasn’t registered as a contender, presented his view about the simplification of the procedure for registering independents. He submitted a bill to the Parliament’s Secretariat in the hope that this will be transformed into a legislative proposal by MPs.

The former acting mayor suggests decreasing the number of signatures that need to be collected in the municipality of Chisinau for the applicants to be registered as contenders from over 10,000 lei to 6,300 and extending the signature collection period from 20 days to 30 days. Ruslan Codreanu considers the amendment of the electoral legislation will prevent abuses against independent candidates as it happened to him last autumn.

Ruslan Codreanu said that two weeks ago he staged discussions on his proposals and invited players involved in the electoral process, including MPs, to state their opinions. But none of these and no representative of the Central Election Commission (CEC) accepted the invitation. He considers the lawmakers are directly responsible for the amendment of the legislation and is hopeful that the MPs will pay attention to his initiative and at least one of the 101 MPs will initiate a legislative proposal. If the MPs do not react, he will go to the Ministry of Justice and the CEC, as Codreanu stated for IPN.

He also said that his view about the amendment of the Electoral Code is in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission and was consulted with other independent candidates, electoral experts, the ombudsman and the UNDP team of experts who are working on the modification of the Electoral Code.