MPs pronounce on legal action taken against Constantin Tanase

The criminal proceedings instituted against the esteemed journalist Constantin Tanase, the director of the daily “Timpul de dimineata” (“Morning Time’), provoked angry reactions from the Opposition MPs at the plenary meeting of February 14 and were the subject of the statements of a number of legislators, Info-Prim Neo reports. At the very start of the meeting, the president of the National Liberal Party Vitalia Pavlicenco said that the Parliament should invite the Prosecutor General Valeriu Gurbulea to give explanations over this matter. The MP of the Moldova Noastra Alliance Party Leonid Bujor proposed adopting a parliamentary appeal regarding the guaranteeing of the freedom of expression and of opinion. But the majority parliamentary group rejected both of the proposals. In a statement presented at the end of the meeting by Bujor, the AMN faction demanded that the Prosecutor General’s Office should exclude the interpretation of phases taken out of context with the aim of persecuting the journalist Constantin Tanase. Vitalia Pavlicenco described Tanase’s case as example of dementia of the Communists that make use of all the state levers to win the elections by dividing the Moldovan society. Vlad Filat, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, condemned the Prosecutor’s Office for its actions, stressing that they were taken as a result of the instructions to more seriously deal with the press given by the head of state to the Security and Information Service. The General Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against the director of the newspaper “Timpul de dimineata” on charges of instigation to national, racial and religious hatred or dismemberment during an authorised protest. The journalist considers that the legal action taken by the Prosecutor General’s Office against him is a first step towards carrying out President Vladimir Voronin’s instructions to deal with political and media financing from abroad given to the Security and Information Service. According to Constantin Tanase, the authorities aim to discredit one of the most important Romanian publications in Moldova and in such a way all the independent press and the community of independent journalists of Moldova. A number of media organisations and politicians made statements in support of Constantin Tanase, condemning the Prosecutor’s Office for its actions.