Social Liberal Party says political centre segment should be consolidated

The Social Liberal Party (PSL) is for the consolidation of the central segment of the political spectrum by creating an alliance of the centre-right and centre-left Social-Liberal and Social-Democratic parties that would take part in the 2009 parliamentary elections. At a news conference held at Info-Prim Neo on October 3, the PSL leader Oleg Serebrian said that after the parliamentary elections of 2005, the centre segment has fragmented. According to Serebrian, the ruling party also plays a part in this. He said that the division of the political centre segment is a dangerous tendency because it is well-known that the centre forces are the ones that consolidate the society in a democracy and manage to implement a constructive policy at all the levels. The PSL leader also said that there are enough levers at the moment, both at internal and external levels, to bring these parties to the negotiating table. He announced that PSL spoke about this with leaders of several political organizations from the given segments, who said they welcome and support the idea. Serebrian said that not all the parties will accept to merge and an alliance is possible in such a case. PSL considers that there should be organized a permanent roundtable meeting of these parties that will discuss the programmatic principles of what is called “the third way” – political tendency between Social-Democracy and Social-Liberalism, which can help bring the parties closer, Serebrian said. The cited source also said that the public is expecting the political parties to join. They want a political force that will resist the again increasing pressure on the part of PCRM. According to Serebrian, a fragmented opposition cannot put up a strong resistance. He stated that recently he had discussions with members of the European Parliament delegation, who also expressed their skepticism about the fragmentation of the centre segment and recommended looking for compromise solutions so as to jointly take part in elections. Moldova saw many intentions to set up alliances or broad political blocks in its political history. Among the largest organizations of this kind are the Alliance for Democracy and Reform (ADR) and the “Democratic Moldova” Bloc (BMD). ADR was created after the parliamentary elections of 1998 and ruled in Moldova until 2001, but the internal misunderstandings led to early elections in 2001, when PCRM won the constitutional parliamentary majority. BMD was set up before the elections of 2005. Formed of several Opposition parties, it split up immediately after the elections. Four Opposition parties decided to create a majority alliance in the Chisinau Municipal Council after the local elections of June 3, 2007. The alliance has not managed yet to elect the administration of the capital city, everybody pointing fingers at each other.