Electoral ceiling for parliamentary elections raised to 6%

The Parliament increased the ceiling for entering the legislature for parties or social-political organizations from 4% to 6%. The MPs adopted a number of amendments to the Electoral Code by the vote of 62 MPs on April 10, Info-Prim Neo reports. The factions of the Communists Party (PCRM) and of the Christian- Democratic People’s Party (PPCD) voted in favor of the minimum ceiling of 6%. During parliamentary debates, the PPCD leader Iurie Rosca said that the ceiling of 6% did not affect the democratic norms, stressing yet that there was no common European norm in this respect. The deputy speaker expressed his confidence that PPCD would manage to garner the number of votes needed to enter the next Parliament. The president of the Democratic Party (PD) Dumitru Diacov said that the ceiling should remain at the level of 4%. The MP reminded that in 2005, the Parliament decreased the ceiling from 6% to 4% at the recommendation of the Council of Europe, OSCE, the European Parliament and international observers that monitored the election campaign and warned that the ceiling of 6% is too high for Moldova. Diacov stressed that a high ceiling distorts the people’s will because many votes go from one party to another and this makes the Parliament less representative. The Communist MP Vadim Misin stated that in 2005, the international consultants only recommended reducing the ceiling to 4%, but stressed that it is up to the Parliament to decide. According to Misin, in most of the European states the electoral ceiling is 5%, while in more than 10 states - 6%. Dumitru Diacov’s proposal to maintain the existent electoral ceiling was backed by only 15 MPs. The parliamentary majority also rejected other two proposals of the PD president. Diacov proposed that the public television should offer free broadcast time equally to all the candidates during the election campaign, while the order in which the parties are written in the ballot papers should be decided by draw at the end of the election campaign. The new version of the Electoral Code says that the draw will be performed every day. Other amendments to the Code exclude the phrase “electoral blocs”, ban the persons sentenced by definitive court decisions and have criminal records from taking part in the electoral race, fix regulations for the electoral advertising through mobile phones and the Internet similar to the regulations used for print media. Another amendment bans the MPs from holding dual citizenship. It says that when registering, the candidates must declare that they have the citizenship of another state and confirm by documents that they renounced the nationality of another state or withdrew the application for citizenship when they obtain the seat of MP. According to authors, this norm was borrowed from the legislation of Lithuania.