2009 election campaign is one of the dirtiest in Moldova’s modern history, Serafim Urecheanu

The conditions for holding the election campaign for the 2009 parliamentary elections are inequitable, while the campaign is one of the dirtiest and with the most serious violations ever recorded in the modern history of Moldova, the president of the Moldova Noastra Alliance (AMN), Serafim Urecheanu said, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. The AMN leader told a news conference on March 10 that the Communist Party (PCRM), which has governed Moldova during the past eight years, uses broadly and impudently the administrative resources for electoral purposes and demonstratively and contemptuously defies the law. According to the AMN, the first candidates on the PCRM list, who also hold important state posts, use the privileges and official positions in the election campaign in order to exercise direct administrative influence over budget-paid employees. “This way, they violate the legislation of Moldova and pun the other election runners in unequal conditions. That’s why, we filed an application to the Central Election Commission (CEC), demanding that Voronin (Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin, e.n.), Lupu (Sparker Marian Lupu) and Greceanii (Prime Minister Zinaida Grecianii) are suspended from their official posts for the period of the election campaign,” Serafim Urecheanu said. The AMN president stated that the Ministry of Internal Affairs engages in the election campaign in breach of the law. According to Urecheanu, the Minister of the Interior Gheorghe Papuc has information about the persons that can influence the voters to choose the PCRM provided by the district police commissioners. He said regretfully that these persons include representatives of the AMN. The party will lodge a contestation over this case as well. It said it already sent a copy of the document to the Council of Europe. Serafim Urecheanu has said that the AMN possesses new information that the authorities prepare to broadly rig the April 5 elections. He stated that the Ministry of Information Development announced a figure of 3.026 million voters, but the data offered by the local public administrations to the CEC show a figure of 2.451 million voters. “We checked these data in some of the districts and ascertained significant differences. In Cantemir for example, there appeared new streets with entire families in the figures. The number of voters was falsified to include 600,000 voters more,” Serafim Urecheanu said. The AMN filed a contestation over this case too and informed the Council of Europe in a note about this. The AMN also said that the mass media that serves the interests of the PCRM focuses exclusively on the ruling party and ignores or defames the Opposition forces, while the election and broadcasting authorities avoid making decisions in the voters’ favor. So far, the AMN has lodged over 60 contestations to the CEC.