High voter turnout is due to civil society, opinions

Civil society, especially the nongovernmental organizations involved in the electoral process, contributed to the increase in the turnout of voters in the November 28 early legislative elections, consider leaders of Moldovan NGOs, Info-Prim Neo reports. “Civil society had a good performance in conveying the message as regards the importance of the vote. This is seen mainly in the increased participation in elections, especially of the young people,” said the executive director of the Resource Center for Human Rights (CreDO) Sergiu Ostaf The director of the Independent Press Association Petru Macovei shared this opinion. According to him, civil society, through the multiple awareness raising campaigns aimed at motivating the voters to take part in elections, did very well in this election campaign. Sergiu Ostaf stressed that civil society can be praised for raising the issue of financing the activities of election runners. The opinion leaders stated the NGOs do not manage to identify and promote the changes needed to improve the quality of the registers of voters. Sergiu Ostaf said the NGOs should not only monitor the situation, but also promote changes and identify cases of deviation from the legislation and abusive behavior that are rather frequent in the election campaigns in Moldova. Nicolae Panfil, secretary of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, said civil society is not able to adequately monitor the election campaigns as the elections in Moldova take place rather often. “It is difficult to mobilize the necessary resources when the periods between campaigns are so short and there is not enough time to properly plan the voter education activities,” Nicolae Panfil stated. He also said that the financial resources earmarked for voter education activities are usually limited and this implies a high degree of mobilization on the part of society in election campaigns.