For the first time in the history of the Republic of Moldova, the current Parliament betrayed the concept of sovereignty and didn’t honor the obligations assumed before the people in the election campaign. The Parliament’s activity was redirected to a very narrow group of people who set a series of tasks for the volatile parliamentary majority that lacks any credibility, in an ultimatum-like way, public policy expert Ștefan Gligor said in the public debate “Place of Parliament of 20th legislature in life of society and in history of Moldovan parliamentarianism” that was the 98th installment of the series of debates “Developing political culture through public debates”, staged by IPN News Agency and Radio Moldova.
The expert stated there were allegations as to the fact that the current majority was formed by bribing MPs. This fact wasn’t investigated by the prosecution bodies, probably because they are busy with the harassment of the local public authorities, intimidation of civic activists and their chasing,” stated Ștefan Gligor. The expert said Moldova’s Parliament is now not really a Parliament. “The current Parliament would have been an institution if it had respected Moldova’s legislation and done legislative work in the people’s interests. If we analyze by chapters the activity of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, through the angle of lawmaking, we will see that the obligations assumed before the development partners were more seriously violated with each adopted package of laws, and the security, stability and financial welfare of the oligarchic group that now controls the Republic of Moldova became more powerful,” he noted.
“As long as they look for traitors through the activity of the “Open Dialog” Foundation and the “hand of Moscow” among the extraparliamentary opposition, they actually commit an offense. The concept of sovereignty is annihilated as a group of private individuals took over control and this is usurpation of power that has serious consequences as tens of thousands of people left their homes, thousands of children were put on the list of those who are brought up by one parent or without any parent. And there is no other more serious crime against the own people than the humiliation and impoverishing of the people who voted for you four years ago and you do not even bother to answer when you are asked. We have never had a more irresponsible, more volatile and disgraceful Parliament, in terms of its activity, and time has come to underline this.”
Ștefan Gligor said 13 years ago he served for the Information, Analysis and Forecasts Service of the Parliament’s Apparatus and helped work out a concept of cooperation between the legislature and civil society. The document was adopted by a majority of votes of MP, event if there was the ‘Communist epoch’, and continues to be in force. It laid the foundations of the cooperation between the legislative body and civil society and this was a first step towards the civilization of the format of communication and the level of transparency in the Parliament’s activity, as the laws were adopted overnight until then, without preliminary consultations.
Ștefan Gligor said that cooperation concept provides that any draft law should be published 14 days before it is given the first reading so that the NGOs and the people formulate proposals and amendments. If the legislature does not agree with these, it should explain why. Different strategies of cooperation between civil society and Parliament were later designed to supplement that main document . But the current Parliament, of the 20th legislature, ignored the principles of cooperation with civil society and of respect for the pluralism of opinion and also the necessity of explaining the adopted decisions. The legislature preferred to discuss and argue with “pocket” civil society that supported or neglected the aspects that were raised by the Council of Europe, the European Commission and other institutions. Among these were the fiscal reform and the reform of the electoral system that could lead to the non-recognition of the parliamentary elections for the first time in the country’s history.
“If you ask me about the place of the Parliament of the 20th legislature in the history of the Republic of Moldovan, I can say this is definitely that Parliament that managed to annihilate the concept of sovereignty for the first time. For me, this is a definite fact. There is a big difference between the current Parliament and the Parliament of 2001-2005 as that legislature was voted by the people and that majority was generated by the people’s massive support. Now we have a Parliament that was voted based on particular promises, but was later reshaped according to private personal interests. This is betrayal of the obligations assumed by the MPs before the people and implementation of a plan of mainly legislative activity that favors a narrow, group interest,” stated Ștefan Gligor, nothing the current parliamentary majority that followed this scenario should be prosecuted.
The debate “Place of Parliament of 20th legislature in life of society and in history of Moldovan parliamentarianism” forms part of the series of debates held by IPN News Agency and Radio Moldova as part of the project “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
