Lawyer insists on revealing elements of corruptibility and discrimination in Law on Parties

“The law on parties has not undergone anti-corruption expertise. Here is the interest of those who want to be financed,” a lawyer from Chisinau, Mihai Corj, stated at a news conference on Tuesday, February 3. Info-Prim Neo News Agency reports that it is the second conference in which the lawyer asks for instituting a moratorium on financing parties from the the tax-payers’ money, the first being organized on December 26, 2008. Mihai Corj is especially dissatisfied with article 28 of the Law on Parties which refers to their financing, that is 0.2% of the incomes provided annually in the state budget. The lawyer considers that the provision which stipulates taking into account the number of mandates gathered by parties as a result of local elections (art. 28 (b)) discriminates Balti. Corj says that it is not a second-level territorial administrative unit, as the other districts are. He maintains that while calculating the financing quantum, not the number of mandates obtained must be taken into consideration, but the number of votes. “Have people been asked if they want to support the political parties, or has any poll been made?,” the lawyer wondered. “The most profitable affair in Moldova becomes instituting a political party, where profitability is ensured through funding from the state budget. Corruption has not been born today,” Mihai Corj added. He believes that supporting the political parties from the state budget should be postponed until Moldova joins the European Union and because of the global economic crisis and the money could be allotted to villages. Mihai Corj calculates that, by virtue of this law, the parties will be able to get together up to 50 million lei annually till 2013. In December, 2007, the Parliament adopted a new law on parties, which provides that the parties represented in the parliament and those, having at least 50 mandates in the district-level local councils out of the total number in the country, should be financed from the state budget.