The organization of transport to polling places is not a violation of the electoral legislation. It is a deviation aimed at corrupting voters, chairwoman of the Central Elected Commission Alina Russu was quoted by IPN as saying in the talk show “Moldova live” on the public TV channel Moldova 1.
“If the person is transported to the polling station in an organized way to vote and is imposed to vote and this cannot express his/her will freely, this is a penal deviation and we had related complaints on the election day. We transmitted these complaints to the competent bodies for being investigated,” stated Alina Russu, noting about 50 applications were submitted to the General Police Inspectorate for determining if the voters were corrupted or not.
Promo-LEX programs director Pavel Postică said the organized transportation of voters to polling stations should be regarded from different angles. “I would not risk saying that this is allowed by law as the transportation of passengers is a service and, according to the legislation, the provision of services to people to make them vote one way or another is banned,” he noted.
Pavel Postică made reference to a Constitutional Court judgement of 2016, which clearly says that the organization of transport should be clarified by the legislative body. “Regrettably, Parliament failed to answer clearly – is this a violation or not. If this is permitted, we should see these costs included in the reports of election contestants,” said the programs director of Promo-LEX.
Editorialist Nicolae Negru noted the situation concerning the organized transportation of voters to polling places is indeed unclear. “Who paid for this transport? Maybe a foreign state, but financing from foreign sources is banned. There could be a small door through which external financing reaches the Republic of Moldova,” he stated.
According to Nicolae Negru, it is good that many Transnistrian citizens came to vote, but Moldova’s legislation should be respected and this organized participation should not be a diversion. “The Central Election Commission is obliged to analyze the violations committed in the previous elections and come up with concrete proposals for removing them. But the CEC didn’t do this and didn’t formulate proposals before the parliamentary elections,” said the editorialist.
On the parliamentary election day on February 24, there were made public pictures and videos showing how Transnistrian citizens were taken to the polling stations intended for them in an organized way, by minibuses and buses. In this connection, the electoral bloc ACUM requested the Constitutional Court not to recognize the elections in the two constituencies formed in the Transnistrian region, but the request was rejected.
