In the election campaign of 2010, the parties of the current government coalition made eight promises concerning corruption combating. According to the platform promis.md, launched by the Association for Participatory Democracy (ADEPT), three of these promises were fulfilled, but unsatisfactorily, two – satisfactorily and one – in a good way. None of them was delivered excellently. The data were presented in a news conference at IPN on November 13.
“Not many things were done in this period, including to fulfill the promises made by the political parties, such as the diminution of the immunity of judges, adjustment of the Penal Code to the civil and penal conventions of the Council of Europe and the UN Convention against Corruption, toughening up of punishment for bribery. Transparency in the process of declaring the personal interests of functionaries and public servants was significantly increased. Practically all the statements, except those that cannot be made public in accordance with the law, were placed on the website of the National Integrity Commission. In fact, one of the promises made was to set up the National Integrity Commission and this was done,” stated ADEPT associate expert Mariana Kalughin.
However, the situation in this field has improved significantly, while corruption remains a serious problem. “Though the National Integrity Commission was set up, we were all witnesses to the difficulties faced when creating it. The Commission started to work de facto in 2013, though this fact should have taken place in February – March 2012,” stated Mariana Kalughin. The expert underlined that regretfully, the national legal framework does not allow developing the potential of the National Integrity Commission and the needs of the Commission are ignored, while the allocated budget is decreasing.
As to unfulfilled promises, Mariana Kalughin mentioned the annulment of the immunity of MPs, the adoption of a new Constitution that would have modified, among others, the method of naming the prosecutor general and the increase in the transparency of the mass media. A bill on media ownership transparency was passed only in the first reading.
www.promis.md is a platform centering on the activity and performance of the politicians and elected functionaries. It is complementary to the portals www.alegeri.md and www.partide.md. The financial support for working out the platform by ADEPT was provided by the National Endowment for Democracy Moldova within Empowering Citizens to Monitor the Politicians’ Promises Project.
