Current election campaign reveals lack of political culture, Petru Macovei

The 2010 election campaign is characterized by lack of political culture among politicians and citizens, with the politicians using rude words and inadequately informing the voters, the head of the Independent Press Association (API) Petru Macovei stated for Info-Prim Neo. According to Macovei, the fact that politicians' messages are far from forming part of a civilized dialogue between political opponents shows that the political class in Moldova did not make much progress. Some of the politicians show lack of education. “The methods and messages used by the Communists Party are inadmissible for a party that presumably wants to promote a civilized behavior between the political forces. The media outlets that support this party use suburban language to defame and discredit the political opponents of the PCRM. The other election runners, like the Moldova's Patriots Party and the Party for Nation and Country, use aggressive messages that rather scare the people than attract them. The fact that some of the parties do not have an electoral program, but only slogans shows that they are not ready to have a dialogue with the people. For their part, the people doubt that these parties are able to efficiently govern the country,” said Petru Macovei. As to the political culture of the voters, Petru Macovei said that the people living in towns are better informed about the political life and the positions of different parties and thus are more politically civilized. However, there are persons with high political culture in urban areas as well nihilists in urban areas, he said. According to Petru Macovei, the people are now better informed because the public television channel Moldova 1 started to focus on the public interests and this can lead to improved political culture among voters. The expert considers that civil society can act as an intermediary between the political class and the people and can organize public debates to help the people increase their political culture. The Moldovan civil society carries out different campaigns, especially in rural areas, where the people lack information about the political developments.