Elections in Germany – lessons for Moldova

The Republic of Moldova has to learn several simple lessons from the elections in Germany, but does not have much time for this, says Igor Botan, the executive director of the Association for Participative Democracy “Adept”. The political analyst took part in the elections for the Bavarian State Parliament as observer and was impressed by the political culture in Germany, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to Igor Botan, the political culture provides for the electoral laws not to be restrictive, allowing the elections to be organized in a relaxed manner. For example, the ballot papers in Germany are not documents of strict control. Any citizen can ask for a ballot paper for a keepsake. The ballot is given after it is marked as a sample. “This shows that in such countries as Germany the ethic norms are observed and anyone that would dare to violate the rules of the game will be in disgrace and will not be able to take part in elections,” Igor Botan has told Info-Prim Neo. Another thing that impressed the observer was the fact that Bavaria has been governed by the Christian-Social Union for 46 years, since 1962. The Union has an absolute majority of votes and more than half of the seats in the regional Parliament. Though the Union polled 43% of the vote in these elections, there was a difficult situation because they did not have any experience of coalitions. The electorate punished the Christian-Socials with 17% of the vote because they did not take into account the opinions of other political forces and of the people when they modified the local law on education, decreasing the length of study in secondary education from 9 to 8 years. “If we want Moldova to be prosperous, we must first of all be honest with ourselves and demanding with those that represent us” – these are the simple lessons that Igor Botan thinks Moldova should learn from Germany’s experience. “We do not have yet much time to transpose the German experience to Moldova and therefore we must hurry,” said the executive director of “Adept”, Igor Botan.