Political party calls on Opposition parties to hold roundtable meetings

The National Liberal Party (PNL) suggests calling roundtable meetings with all the Opposition parties, similar to those of 2002-2003. “The pre-election year 2008 and the election campaign of 2009 are periods of time in which no reforms are carried out and no progress is made towards democracy in Moldova because the ruling party – the Communist Party of Moldova (PCRM) – uses all the means possible to insure victory in elections,” the PNL president Vitalia Pavlicenco has told Info-Prim Neo. The MP said that the meetings should not center on how the parties will take part in elections, but on the formulation of common attitudes and positions on the events happening in the society, on the abuses of the coalition of PCRM-PPCD (the Christian Democratic People’s Party), on the lack of access to spaces for public debates for the Opposition, on the cases of persecution of the political opponents and repression of the free press. Pavlicenco said that the non-Communist parties must have common stances so as to send a signal to the society and the West. “We must show that the political context in Moldova is discredited and no free and fair elections can be held here. We must also issue joint statements in the election campaign, pointing to the abuses and vote rigging that will definitely exist given the latest strengthening of the police and the appointment of ministers that arouse suspicion,” Vitalia Pavlicenco said. The PNL president said that she discussed this proposal with other parties. “It was said that the Moldova Noastra Alliance Party (AMN) would launch such an initiative, but I don’t know why they did not do it. I think that some of the parties consider they have greater chances in elections and do not want roundtable talks. They think the parties with slimmer chances will hinder them from achieving their electoral goals,” Vitalia Pavlicenco said. She considers that such an attitude is not constructive. According to Vitalia Pavlicenco, the non-Communist parties, including PPCD, weekly held roundtable meetings during 2002-2003, after the European organizations identified violations of the democratic norms committed by the ruling party. The roundtable meetings were halted after the Kozak Memorandum was rejected and the danger that the Transnistrian conflict would be solved to the detriment of Moldova’s European aspirations disappeared for a while. The PNL leader considers that these meetings helped reject the memorandum and unify the Opposition, as a result of which the Democratic Moldova Bloc (AMN, the Democrat Party and the Social Liberal Party) won 34 seats in the Parliament in the 2005 elections.