On July 29, it is 20 years of the adoption of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova. IPN News Agency asked a number of analysts and opinion leaders to what extent the Supreme Law ensures now the rule of law and defends the human rights. What is and what the Constitution should be for the country and the ordinary people?
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To what extent is the right to freedom of opinion and expression guaranteed in Moldova? Should something be changed at constitutional level?
Antoniţa Fonari, secretary general of the NGO Council:
As long as the people in Moldova know their rights and make effort to defend them and as long as the Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression, nothing hinders the people from protesting, writing on social networking sites and on blogs. We complain before the TV set and on the park benches, eating sunflower seeds and spitting out the husk, violating other laws. But, in fact, we should change things by having a correct behavior.
The Moldovans enjoy great possibilities of expressing themselves, protesting and improving things. The people are indeed able to say what they think, and things change if we insist enough.
They often tell me that I manage to change things because I’m “Antonita Fonari”. But I’m not the head of state or the head of a police station and have no other posts that would offer me leverage for traffic of influence for example, so that I could protect my interests. Through civic activism, I became a public person. Look around. The opinion leaders asserted themselves by their positions.
I don’t think we are in the situation to complain a lot about the violation of the right to expression. Moldova has many free media outlets. When a media institution does not offer the right to expression or is not open because it belongs to a party, one can use social networking sites or blogs.
When the persons want to change certain things, they must make effort in this respect. I think that in this country we can use the right to expression to a greater extent than in other countries, but the people must have this wish to say and, after they say, they should do something better and make effort to change something.
As to the bill concerning the control of the Internet, the executive is trying to control this segment, but this is nonsense. There should be Internet police, which, in certain conditions, can get permission to intervene and follow a person, but there must be very clear proofs in this respect.
This bill must be rejected because it limits the freedom of expression and the people will be afraid to publish their opinion as they may be blackmailed with the personal information revealed.
In general, there are and will be many institutions that will try to resort to all kinds of manipulations to protect their image or to promote untruths. But there are the courts of law for dealing with such cases. Attempts will be made by politicians to shut media outlets or civic activists up, but, in such a case, we cannot say that we have this constitutional right guaranteed.
The Constitution of the Republic of Moldova
Article 32 Freedom of opinion and expression
(1) Any citizen has the right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression in public by words, images or other possible ways.
(2) The freedom of expression must not affect the honor, dignity or right of another person to the own view.
(3) The contesting and defaming of the state and the people, the call to aggression war, national, racial or religious hatred, the inciting of discrimination, territorial separatism, public violence and other manifestations that impinge on the constitutional regime are banned and punished by law.
