The Venice Commission, in its plenary session of March 16-17, together with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), maintained the critical appraisal of the changes made to the electoral legislation of the Republic of Moldova, IPN reports.
Moreover, the jpoint opinion on the law for amending and completing certain legislative acts (Electoral system for the election of Parliament) says the fundamental modification of the Election Code runs counter to the previous recommendations. Specifying that a successful electoral reform is based at least on the respect for the international standards and recommendations, broad consensus and proper implementation of the legislation, the Venice Commission and ODIHR underlined that the Moldovan lawmakers didn’t take into account the recommendation not to intervene in the electoral rules in the current political conditions. The experts said it will be yet seen how the mixed electoral system is put into practice in the future elections.
Welcoming the specific measures to encourage parties to nominate women in single-member constituencies and to reduce by 25% the donations to finance the campaign, the international experts expressed their skepticism about the independence of the commission empowered by the government to establish constituencies and about the fact that there was envisioned no system for reviewing the limits of constituencies, highlighting the procedures against the decisions taken by electoral commissions and against candidates.
The joint opinion reminds of the similar content of the recommendations formulated earlier over the Moldovan government’s attempt to amend the electoral system. Both the opinions of 2014 and of 2017 showed concern about the introduction of the mixed electoral system instead of the proportional representation system.
In another development, the Venice Commission approved of the bill to amend Article 42 of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova concerning the freedom of assembly.
