{Adds par. 4 and 7} Another 49 members of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) announced they leave the party. According to a communiqué issued on April 16, the given members represent the Chisinau Zonal Organization headed by deputy mayor Igor Lupulciuc, Info-Prim Neo reports. The signatories argue that the present PSD does not represent the values for which they joined and worked within this party. “After Dumitru Braghis made public the statement regarding the basic principles of the agreement on the Transnistrian region between Moldova and Russia, which provides for the concession (lease) of Transnistria to another state for a 30-year period, the PSD showed that it is an antinational and antidemocratic party,” the communiqué says. In another communiqué, the Drochia Zonal Organization says that all its 17 members make common cause with the members of the Political Bureau, who announced that they leave the PSD on April 15. They say that the present PSD does not observe the statute and program of the party within which there is no democracy. The Rezina Zonal Organization of the PSD also supported Eduard Musuc and the members of the Political Bureau that left the party. “None of the 20 members of the local organization in Rezina wants to form part of the party that leases Transnistria out,” the organization says in a statement. On April 15, five members of the PSD, including the secretary general Eduard Musuc, announced that they left the ranks of the party following Musuc’s exclusion from the PSD by ten votes of the members of the party’s Political Bureau last week. Then, the PSD president Dumitru Braghis said that Musuc worked against the interests of the PSD and in favor of another election runner during the election campaign and stopped the propagandistic activities in the municipality of Chisinau. Eduard Musuc denied the accusations. He said that the decision to exclude him from the PSD was illegal, stressing that he was elected as secretary general at the party’s Congress and can be dismissed also at the Congress. Eduard Musuc headed the Social Democratic Party until December 2007, when the party merged with the Social Democracy Party led by Dumitru Braghis. About 100 persons overall left the PSD during the last days.