The frequent changes made to the electoral legislation, combined with the political changes, do not lead to democratic stability and can undermine the people’s confidence in the state institutions and in the rule of law. In a post-electoral conference held in Chisinau, Francois Friederich, Head of Electoral Assistance and Census Division, Council of Europe Directorate General of Democracy (DG-II), said that some of the amendments made to the Electoral Code before the recent local and new parliamentary elections had a negative impact on the efficiently of the electoral bodies and involved players.
According to Francois Friederich, the Central Election Commission (CEC) didn’t have enough time to sufficiently oversee the election campaign at the last elections, IPN reports.
CEC president Dorin Cimil said the electoral legislation should be improved so as to eliminate the suspicions about alleged electoral frauds existing in society for a period. He called on the political parties, the public authorities, nongovernmental organizations and the media to act in a correlated way so as to identify and solve the problems faced in the electoral process.
Giulia Re, Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Moldova, said the use of administrative resources is an important subject in the electoral process to which the authorities should have a more serious attitude because, in this context, it goes to the essence of good governance and good democracy.
Contacted by IPN for a comment in connection with the conference, Nicolae Panfil, program coordinator at Promo-LEX Association, said the necessity of strengthening the CEC’s capacity to monitor party and election campaign funding has been more intensely felt. Currently, the institution’s reaction to the issue is not always transparent and fair. “The way in which the election contenders report these costs points to the lack of human and financial capacities and of powers needed for the CEC to be able to achieve this objective,” he stated.
Nicolae Panfil also said that the law enforcement agencies should be better trained to identify and documents the irregularities discovered in the election campaign.
