The legal provision concerning the financing of political parties from the state budget takes effect on January 1, 2016. The chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Iurie Ciocan, in an interview for Radio Free Europe, said that for this legal provision to be implemented, the 2016 draft state budget must be adopted and this must include money for party funding, IPN reports.
“From my viewpoint, the funding of parties with money from the state budget can be a vaccine that will make the political parties healthy and will increase the quality of internal democracy inside each party,” stated Iurie Ciocan.
He also said that the total sum provided from the state budget for financing the activities of political parties is halved and is distributed in accordance with the performance of the parties. Half of the sum is distributed based on the results achieved in the parliamentary elections, while the other half based on the score obtained in the local elections.
Iurie Ciocan noted that the funding of parties is a necessity because today the parties depend on sponsors, sometimes even one sponsor. Evidently, these sponsors influence the party’s policy and the democratic activity inside it. Decisions in a group cannot be taken. Not all the interests of the party are taken into account. When money is distributed from the state budget, the parties, as a group of people who gathered together to achieve their political aims, will be freer in adopting decisions and will not depend on the opinion of the person who finances the party.
As to the cases when persons who enter Parliament leave the parties on whose ticket they were elected, Iurie Ciocan said the law does not regulate such changes and does not stipulate how these parties should be funded, but the CEC is able to decide by itself how to provide financing in such situations.
According to the last Opinion Barometer made public on December 9, 87% of the respondents do not trust the political parties.
