The Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) will not submit the lists containing more than 220,000 signatures in favor of a constitutional referendum to the Central Election Commission, because, according to the party, the current government is building numerous obstacles for the initiative to fail, Info-Prim Neo reports. PLDM sought to make the election of the president a matter of popular vote. The party also sought to introduce a mixed electoral system, according to which 51 members of Parliament would be elected from multi-member party lists (as done at present), and the remaining 50 on a single-member-district basis. PLDM president Vlad Filat told a news conference on Tuesday that the decision not to submit the signature lists was made following the position of the Election Commission, which announced that PLDM needed 340,000 signatures (and not 200,000 as the Constitution states) to initiate the referendum; and that was done when the signature collection campaign was almost over. Vlad Filat thinks that the government resorted to a trick, employing a constitutional contradiction rooted in the territorial administrative reform in 2002. Besides the 200,000 signatures needed, there is another stipulation in the Constitution, which requires at least 20,000 signatures from each of at least a half of the country's territorial units of second level, which is obviously more than 200,000. Vlad Filat said that his party had the option to keep going and push the initiative ahead, by proving later the illegalities of the government. “But knowing that the signers will likely face political harassment, the party decided not to submit the lists, placing the interest and the safety of the citizens above the political interests of the party”, Filat explained. According to him, the decision was a hard one, given the expectancies of the citizens and the three-month efforts of the volunteers engaged in the signature campaign. “We assume the consequences of the decision we made. We will come back with the initiative to amend the constitution after the 2009 elections, when the Communists leave power”, declared Filat. At the press conference, the PLDM representatives also complained of pressure exerted by the authorities on the initiative group throughout the signature collection campaign, as thousands of people were summoned to appear before the prosecutors to explain the reasons why the joined the party or to be subjected to humiliating signature checks.