The head of the Parliament’s legal commission for appointments and immunities Olesea Stamate said that the citizens are discouraged as none of the politicians, judges or prosecutors so far served time in jail for corruption offenses, IPN reports.
“As none of the political players, judges or prosecutors were jailed for corruption offenses in a broader meaning, not only illegal financing and voter corruption, the people from the start say: “Why should I be afraid? Has someone served time in jail? No, they haven’t and I therefore hope that the institutions that handle such cases will mobilize and make effort to complete the investigations as soon as possible,” Olesea Stamate stated in the program “Reflection Points” on Vocea Basarabiei station.
The MP referred also to the deregistration of the election contenders representing a political party for illegal financing. “There were a series of investigations and these showed that this new political party was nothing but an extension of the outlawed political party, which continued the same illegal financing and electoral fraud practices using very large sums of money. Respectively, the restrictions stipulated by the Electoral Code didn’t affect this political party whose participation in elections could have compromised the election process and, in general, the values and democracy in our county as, when the votes are bought, we cannot speak about free and fair elections,” stated the MP.
According to her, more radical and harsher measures need to be taken sometimes so as to anticipate the actions of those organized criminal groups as the amendment of the legislation takes longer.
“We clearly saw examples when several thousand or tens of thousands of bank cards with money put into the accounts were introduced for being distributed to members of the electoral team of this party, and when attempts to smuggle large sums of money in cash into the country were made. Some of the cases are detected, while others aren’t probably detected as not all of them can be traced because their operating procedures change swiftly and the law enforcement agencies not always manage to cover all of them, primarily when local elections are held and electoral fraud activities take place at community level,” said Olesea Stamate.
