Public financing of political parties should be shelved until Moldova joins EU, jurist thinks

The initiative to finance political parties from public coffers should be frozen until Moldova eventually joins the European Union, thinks jurist Mihai Corj; the lawyer told a news conference on Wednesday that the parties should “temperate their appetite for public money”, Info-Prim Neo reports. Mihai Corj believes the idea is inopportune - “are things so great in the country that we can afford the luxury to support political parties from public money?”, he asked rhetorically, saying that the 30 to 50 million lei allocated yearly for this purpose should rather be used to build a kindergarten and a grammar school in each village. Corj urged the leaders of political parties to “find responsibility in themselves and declare in their electoral programs a moratorium on public financing until Moldova joins the EU”. The jurist opines that the initiative is discriminatory because it neglects the independent candidates participating in parliamentary and local elections. Government subsidies are assigned according to the number of seats obtained in Parliament and not according to popular vote. At the same time, Mihai Corj believes this initiative to be unable to prevent corruption; on the contrary, it will stimulate this phenomenon, taking into account that the parties' taste for public money is great, he said. In December 2007, the Moldovan Parliament adopted a new law on political parties, which affords public financing to the parties represented in Parliament, that is to those which collected at least 6 percent of the popular vote, and also to the parties which earned at least 5 percent of seats in a local or regional council. The government will earmark for this purpose 0.2 percent of the State Budget's value, proportional to the number of seats in Parliament and local councils. This stipulation will take effect after the elections due to be held next spring. The declared intention was to support political parties and deter corruption among them. Mihai Corj ran in 1998 for a seat in Parliament as an unaffiliated candidate, but didn't poll enough votes to get there. Corj maintains he is not affiliated with any political party and doesn't intend to ever repeat his parliamentary bid again, saying the 3 percent ceiling required for an independent candidate is impossible to reach, and there was no precedent being set.