The electoral context favors the appearance of different types of messages that promote or incite hatred, discrimination or violence against different persons or groups. Therefore, the necessity of adjusting the legal norms appeared so that this type of speech is discouraged. This and other amendments to the electoral legislation referring to elections were discussed in IPN’s public debate “Hate speech prohibited and penalized, novelty at November 5 elections”.

Irina Korobchenko, hate speech monitoring and combating expert at Promo-LEX, said hate speech is any form of expression, such as written texts, images, drawings, audio and video messages, which spreads, promotes, justifies or incites hatred, discrimination or violence against a person or a group of persons based on a protected criterion.

“The data collected by Promo-LEX Association since 2017 until present shows that this type of speech is constantly present in the public sphere, especially online, while the cases of hate speech become more intense during pre-electoral and electoral periods and decrease in intensity after these are over. Our data showed that in principle, the target groups for this type of speech during electoral periods are the politicians, supporters, members of political parties, women, persons from the LGBT community and persons with disabilities. Surety, this type of speech affects anyone. There are much more groups, but the mentioned ones are targeted primarily as our statistics show that out of the about 1,950 cases we identified in 2018-2021, including during electoral periods, about 54% of them were identified in this context. So, I think this is the main justification the lawmakers took into account when they proposed this amendment to the Contravention Code,” stated Irina Korobchenko.

Deputy head of the Chisinau Police Division Tudor Borș said that to be able to correctly ascertain violations stipulated by the new amendments to the Contravention Code, the employees of the General Police Inspectorate were trained.

‘There were trained the managers who can pass on that message. Also, through the agency of the General Police Inspectorate, by subdivisions we already have internal training on the issue so as to ensure that climate of safety and proper electoral competition for all candidates,” stated Tudor Borș, noting that training seminars are further held to ensure a high law implementation level.

Viorica Caluger, trainer of the Center for Continuous Electoral Training, noted that since the amendments to the electoral legislation were adopted up to now, a series of training courses have been staged, including for electoral functionaries of different levels. “We started with electoral district councils of the second level and continued with members of electoral district councils of the first level and tomorrow we begin training members of electoral offices of polling stations,” she said, noting that the training courses are designed to inform both the involved electoral functionaries and also the ordinary voters.

“On October 5, the Center for Continuous Electoral Training trained 372 police officers who will deal with the ascertaining of electoral violations. The training was held online. During October 6-10, the Center for Continuous Electoral Training trained 100 carabineers all over the country. This way, we make sure that all the players involved in the electoral process know what they have to do, are trained and informed as, when all the mechanisms work, the processes go as planned and they are transparent and based on law,” stated Viorica Caluger.

Secretary of the Central Election Commission Alexandru Berlinschii spoke about the other amendments to the electoral legislation, saying that these were made following the analyses and recommendations of missions of national and foreign experts from previous polls.

“The first amendment is that the date of general local elections is set by the Central Election Commission, while the election day is already stipulated in the Electoral Code. So, it was known when elections will be held. The Electoral Code clearly provides that these elections are held on the last Sunday of October or the first Sunday of November and November 5 was set respectively. The second amendment only advantages the candidates in elections. We refer to the reduction in the number of signatures from 10% to 1% for the post of mayor, but not less than 100 signatures, as opposed to 150 signatures earlier. As regards the post of councilor, the same 2% of the total number of voters divided by the number of seats was kept,” stated Alexandru Berlinschii.

He noted that another essential amendment says the voter can support by signature a number of independent candidates. This was not allowed by the previous legislation. Age for contenders for mayor was decreased from 25 to 23. As regards the advantages for voters, these no longer need to present the loose leave accompanying the identity card at the polling place.

The public debate entitled “Hate speech prohibited and penalized, novelty at November 5 elections” was staged by IPN News Agency in the framework of the project “Stimulation of mass media discussion about traditional particularities of local elections and the need for Europeanization” which is supported by Soros Foundation Moldova.