NGOs preparing to monitor upcoming local elections

The civil society organizations are preparing to monitor the general local elections this spring. At a roundtable event on Wednesday, a presentation was made of the final monitoring report on the last year's parliamentary elections, and the authors hope that the recommendations and findings formulated in the report will help the election bodies and the political partie make improvements for the upcoming elections, Info-Prim Neo reports. Ion Manole, the chairman of Promo-Lex Association, stated that both the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the political parties have still much work to do for a better conducting of elections. “We thought it would be opportune to talk about the problems which happened in the past, long before the start of the campaign, in order to mobilize civil society, political parties and the CEC to contribute to a better conducting of elections”, said Ion Manole. Attending the roundtable, CEC Secretary Iurie Ciocan said the election authority will take the NGOs' recommendations into consideration. The recommendations to the election bodies include the initiation of campaigns to raise awareness of the electoral competitors of the need to have a calm and civilized behavior, and also civic education campaigns for the larger public in order to improve turnout rates. Another recommendation is to create a single mechanism which would allow the voters to check the accuracy of the electoral rolls.