PACE rapporteurs angry that Voronin did not find ten minutes to talk to them

“Moldova’s imperative task is now to fix the date of the early elections and to correctly draw up the electoral registers,” said MEP Josette Durrieu. The importance of the early elections was also stressed by another MEP, Egidijus Vareikis. The members of the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) made statements at a news conference themed “Monitoring of Implementation of PACE Resolution 1666 (2009) on the Functioning of Democratic Institutions in Moldova” on Wednesday evening, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The election campaign will start soon. Therefore, the Opposition parties should have access to the public television as, in a country with few newspapers like Moldova, the national public broadcaster is the major instrument,” said Josette Durrieu. “It is bad that the authorities do not want to introduce amendments to the electoral legislation. This counts a lot given Moldova’s European aspirations.” She also said that the election threshold should have remained at 4% rather than raised to 6%. “The Republic of Moldova is a complicated country with many problems. We repeatedly told the authorities not to transform Moldova into a country of one party. But the most important thing is now the preparation for early elections,” Egidijus Vareikis said. He assured that the European organizations will devote special attention to the elections, but Moldova should ask for the participation of observers. “The Opposition’s boycott of the election of the head of state was right. Let’s hope that after the early parliamentary elections there will be no mass disturbances,” he stressed. Vladimir Voronin did not want to have a meeting with the European officials. They discussed with the PCRM representatives - deputy speaker of Parliament Vladimir Turcan and deputy speaker Grigore Petrenco, and with the leader of Moldova Noastra Alliance Serafim Urecheanu and Prosecutor General Valeriu Gurbulea. “I regard Vladimir Voronin’s refusal to talk to us as a negative gesture. The fact that he did not have ten minutes for discussions shows that he has nothing to say,” Egidijus Vareikis said. The PACE delegation’s report “Monitoring of Implementation of the PACE Resolution 1666 (2009) on the Functioning of Democratic Institutions in Moldova” will be presented in the European Parliament at the end of next week.