The court of law didn’t validate the June 3 local mayoral elections in Chisinau because both Andrei Nastase and Ion Ceban campaigned on the election day, which is inadmissible according to the Election Code. Both of the candidates, through the agency of live streams on social networking sites, called on the electorate to vote. Even if these didn’t say who namely the people should vote for, the court decided that these actions had a significant impact on the voters’ option, shows the argued judgment that was made public by the Centru branch of the Court of Chisinau, IPN reports.
“The court ascertained that the social networking site through which the electoral contenders illegally campaigned had a massive impact on the voters, which was much greater than the impact of possible agitation through newspapers, meetings etc.,” says the argued judgement.
According to this, the Chisinau Appeals Court, passing its verdict, held that the candidate for mayor of Chisinau Andrei Nastase, through live streams on his Facebook page on the election day, called on the people to go and vote for whom they consider necessary. However, his actions represent electoral agitation. The court noted it is the prerogative of the electoral bodies to call on the electorate to vote on the election day.
The court ruled that such a call made by an election runner on the election day is actually campaigning in favor of himself. Andrei Nastase made calls and campaign slogans on Facebook similar to those made in the election campaign. When only two candidates remain in the electoral race, it is evident that the voters are influenced to vote a particular candidate.
The same violation was committed by Ion Ceban, who on the election day called on the electors to go and vote through his Facebook page and through a number of media outlets. “The information presented by the representative of Ion Ceban by reference (Facebook links) shows the messages, classed as electoral agitation on the election day, which implicitly represent a deviation, were seen and distributed by a larger number of persons that, even if it cannot be determined exactly, incontestably amounts to tens of thousands, which is more than the difference in votes between the candidates in the runoffs.
This way, it is evident that both of the electoral contenders on the election day called on the voters to cast their ballots and committed acts that were classed by the court as illegal electoral agitation through an irrevocable court judgement.
In the evening of June 19, the Centru branch of the Court of Chisinau municipality decided not to validate the results of the new mayoral elections that took place in Chisinau. The lawyers for Andrei Nastase challenged the judgement at the Chisinau Appeals Court. Lawyer Dumitru Pavel has told IPN that the Appeals Court is to pronounce on the issue within three days. According to him, the decision of the first court is illegal as this couldn’t have been taken based on the evidence examined in the hearing.
