The ongoing campaign cannot be considered free as it has been conducted in an atmosphere of fear. And the elections’ outcome is impossible to predict especially in the light of last summer’s invalidated mayoral election in Chisinau. Such opinions were voiced at last night’s “Ora expertizei” talk show on Jurnal TV.
Public policy expert Ștefan Gligor says the race cannot be considered free due to it being held in an atmosphere of fear, threats and intimidations. According to him, over 70% of Moldovans are afraid to speak about the political situation in our country and participate in political activities. “In this environment of general intimidation that our society has been living in since the end of 2015, (...) most single-member constituencies had potential competitors that were afraid to run despite their renown and good reputation”.
Gligor also claimed that the government party uses public resources to buy votes, as do charities associated with political parties such as the Democrats, the Socialists, and the Shor Party. “It’s a race with extreme levels of electoral corruption, with results on the cards in most single-member constituencies. Absolutely unfair elections”, fumed the expert.
WatchDog Community expert Valeriu Pașa says one peculiarity of this election season is the big amount of info-noise to distract attention. “Take the hype about the achievements of this government, invented or real, or some random, unsubstantiated and unproven subjects to get people distracted. There has been a lot of talk about procedure-related matters and very little about what really matters. For example, the way endorsement signatures were collected for many candidates went largely undiscussed. Too bad, because this is one type of evidence proving the abuse of administrative resources”.
Sorin Ioniță, director of the Bucharest-based think-tank EFOR, thinks this campaign is much more unpredictable than the 2016 presidential election, for example. “This election’s results are anyone’s guess and after that incident with the invalidation of the local election in Chisinau, we could even expect those results to be overthrown. I mean, if the outcome turns out bad, we could see suspended parties or candidates in various constituencies. The situation was quite different in the past. But now everything is possible”.
“The obstruction of the diaspora from voting is absolutely outrageous. Of all European countries, Moldova has proportionally the largest diaspora and these people now face the greatest obstacles to voting”, says Sorin Ioniță.
The Romanian expert also thinks that under the mixed voting system the attention has shifted to the local elites and “vote-buying occurs now at a much larger scale”.
