Two Moldovan NGOs are among the founders of Coalition for Clean Parliaments in Balkans and Black Sea Region

Two NGOs from Moldova – Transparency International Moldova (TI-Moldova) and the Informing, Instruction and Social Analysis Center CAPTES – founded, together with NGOs from other 8 countries, the East-European Network “Coalition for Clean Parliaments in Eastern Europe (CPCEE)”. The coalition was constituted on Saturday, October 14 in Sinaia at the initiative of the Romanian Academic Society. The decision to constitute this network was made as a result of a conference where NGO from West Balkans and Black Sea region, as well as the representatives of the World Bank, Council of Europe, European Parliament, Balkan Stability Pact, and Central European Trust participated in. Lilia Carasciuc, the chairman of TI-Moldova told Info-Prim Neo that the founding NGOs represent countries with different level of achievement in fighting political corruption. According to the cited source, Moldova is only at the beginning of this process and it does not have an appropriate legislative base. According to Lilia Carasciuc, adopting some laws on the financing of parties or on lobbyism would be the first step on this path. Subsequently, these laws must be implemented properly, and only these measures taken it will be possible to speak about the involvement of the civil society in fighting corruption, the cited source declared. At the same time, the representative of CAPTES, Radu Gorincioi told Info-Prim Neo that the Center will launch in November 2006, a campaign on informing the public opinion about the necessity of creating a large coalition, to which the civil society willing to participate in the second stage (elaborating a strategy regarding some political integrity norms and standards) will be invited. According to Gorincioi, the fact that this campaign will coincide with the local elections of 2007 will allow the coalition to monitor the actions of the electoral candidates without favoring any party. The campaign “Coalition for Clean Parliaments”, organized during the Romanian Parliamentary Election of 2004, cost 98 candidates their parliamentary mandates. The campaign also contributed significantly to the defeat of PSD. The coalition announced on October 5 its intention to restart this campaign, but this time tackling the Romanian elections for the European Parliament. Bulgaria has also announced its intention to organize such a coalition for the EP elections in 2007. The Balkan network is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and aims at transferring good practices from one country to another, logistically and technically supporting the initiators of this campaign. The participation of network’s members coming from the Black Sea region was financed by Friederich Ebert Stiftung, co-organizer of the conference. The founding members of the Clean Parliaments Coalition in Eastern Europe (CPCEE) are also Albanian Institute for International Studies and Agenda Institute (Albania), Center for the Study of Democracy and George Marshall Association (Bulgaria), Partnership For Social Development (Croatia), Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, TI-Georgia and Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (Georgia), Analytica (Macedonia), The Monitoring Center, The Network for Affirmation of the NGO Sector, Center for Democratic Transition and MANS (Montenegro), Clean Parliament Coalition (Romania), Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Belgrade Center for Human Rights and Fund for an Open Society (Serbia), U.S.-Ukraine Foundation and Center for Ukrainian Reform (Ukraine).