Coalition 2007: The June 3 elections do not meet international standards

The local elections held on 3 June 2007 did not meet to a great extent the international criteria for free and fair elections, says a report of the Coalition 2007, published on Monday, June 4. According to Mihai Godea, Secretary of the Coalition 2007, the June 3 elections do not meet the OSCE standards, the regulations of the Venice Commission and other international documents that are used as evaluation criteria. Among the deviations spotted by the Coalition, the most relevant are the failure to update the voter rolls, inappropriate conditions in the polling places, the insufficient capacity of the ballot boxes, permission to vote without identification papers, campaigning on election day, granting observer accreditations to electoral competitors etc. According to the cited source, this year’s polls saw much more severe violations than the 2005 parliamentary elections, moreover, there occurred new irregularities concerning “pressures on electoral competitors, use of schemes to annul the lists of candidates for district councils”, Godea said. In what concerns the behaviour of mass-media in the election council, the Coalition 2007 found that the access to the audiovisual was monopolised by the ruling party. Besides, the experts termed the provisions of the Regulations on media coverage in election campaign, adopted by CEC, as “excessive”. The parallel vote tabulations by the Coalition 2007 observers showed that the communist candidate for Chisinau mayor Veaceslav Iordan received 28%, Dorin Chirtoaca — 24%, Leonid Bujor - 10%, Vladimir Filat and Dumitru Braghis collected 8 percent each. The rest of candidates polled a total of 22%. In the municipality of Balti the communist candidate collected 67% of the vote. In the municipality of Comrat the majority was also collected by the candidate of the ruling party, Nicolae Dudoglo, who received 84 percent.