Coalition 2009 identifies violations challenging competitiveness of electoral process

The activities carried out during the election campaign are generally within the law. However, the observers point to a number of violations that run counter to the practices of a competitive electoral process. Such a conclusion is contained in the fourth monitoring report presented by the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections – Coalition 2009 on Thursday, March 19, Info-Prim Neo reports. Paul Strutzescu, the president of the League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADOM), which forms part of Coalition 2009, said that the activity of the Central Election Commission during the monitoring period (February 25 – March 18) was in general transparent. The initiation of election debates in mass media is also a positive development. At the same time, LADOM observers identified cases when representatives of the election contenders were attacked and a media outlet (Albasat TV) was intimidated by the law enforcement bodies. The local officials are intimidated by the authorities into not cooperating with the election opponents. Some of the contenders are favored, while others discriminated by the local authorities. The subordinates are imposed by the superiors to take part in public meetings held by the runners. For their part, the election contenders had an indecent and incorrect behavior, using offensive language, did not observe the conditions for placing election ads, camouflaged the electoral propaganda and illegally involved the students in campaigning in schools. LADOM also warns that the imperfectness of the system for drawing up the registers of voters and the possibility of voting on the basis of different identification documents in certain conditions offer the possibility of multiple voting, that is of rigging the elections. The ProGen 2009 Alliance analyzed the election process from the gender angle and ascertained that only seven of the parties have more than 30% of women on their lists, the minimum quota recommended by the European organizations. “More women have been included in the electoral lists compared with the previous elections. The growth is yet insignificant and is not due to the parties’ consistent policy. Even if more parties observed the recommended quota of 30-40%, the women are yet not much present on the first 20 places,” said Catinca Mardarovici, the head of the Political Women’s Club 50/50, which is a member of the ProGen 2009 Alliance. As regards the covering of the election campaign by mass media, the negative trends from the start of the campaign continue. The third report compiled by the Independent Journalism Center (CIJ) and the Independent Press Association (API) shows that most of the media outlets are not impartial as they advantage or disadvantage certain election runners. “Unfortunately, the public stations Moldova 1 and Radio Moldova continue to favor the ruling party, while the Opposition parties have limited access to these stations. This is a reason for concern because the public stations have national coverage and the public in rural areas that have access only to them are provided with tendentious, unilateral and sometimes incorrect information. Eventually, this can have a negative impact on the public,” said Nadine Gogu, the acting director of the CIJ. Coalition 2009 is a voluntary union of NGOs that aims to contribute to ensuring free, fair, transparent and democratic elections for the Parliament. It continues the activities promoting free and fair elections initiated by Coalition 2005 and Coalition 2007 and has 70 NGO members.