The "narrow" result obtained in the referendum was caused by the mistakes made by the PAS and the massive funding from Russia, said the chairman of the Party of Change Ștefan Gligor, who blames the poor result of the referendum on the PAS government’s incapacity to reform the justice system and the law enforcement agencies. In the same connection, PAS MP Vasile Grădinaru said that the persons who organized the vote corruption scheme will be punished criminally and the citizens who accepted money in exchange for their votes will be fined, IPN reports.
The chairman of the Party of Change noted that the PAS government must take responsibility for the result of the referendum. The mistakes made in the governing process made the citizens to give a vote of blame to the Party of Action and Solidarity, and the misedited image of some PAS leaders negatively influenced the referendum outcome.
“The result of the referendum means only one thing: the government was given a slap in the face for all the failures witnessed the last four years. We are talking about the staff policy, the legislative proposals not consulted with the opposition and society. We can talk about an eventual failure of the justice sector reform, a definite failure of the promises to do justice. Four difficult years of mandate and three years of PAS government have turned into continuous negative news,” Ștefan Gligor stated in the program "Black Box" on TV8 channel.
According to him, the anti-rating of a number of people from the PAS dragged this referendum down. "It's hard to get a good result. On the one hand, there are many and convincing failures of the government. On the other hand, there is massive funding from the Russian Federation, which the institutions that weren’t reformed by the PAS did not know how to stop," said the chairman of the Party of Change also said.
On the other hand, government representatives say that the police are fighting the phenomenon of voter corruption and destroyed a series of networks through which citizens were influenced to vote for money. PAS MP Vasile Grădinaru said that the people who accepted money from the Shor group in exchange for their votes will be penalized.
"Those who are the organizers of these massive vote buying are subjects of crimes stipulated d by the Criminal Code and will be criminally investigated. Those who accept remuneration in exchange for votes will be investigated according to the Contravention Code for the fact that they sold their vote and risk a fine of 25,000 to 37,500 lei. Everyone should know that taking 400 lei to sell the future of the Republic of Moldova is not only unchristian, but it is also illegal and they will be punished. As many as 500 reports were drawn up, and the information spread to the groups of these participants and they massively started to flee from the groups,” said Vasile Grădinaru.
The former president of the Constitutional Court, Alexandru Tănase noted that the police's actions to dismantle the voter corruption network are late. He criticized the way in which the law enforcement officers act to combat the phenomenon of electoral corruption. "How was this process of creating a criminal network in which a quarter of a million people participate was possible? I think this process started not two days ago, but a year ago. How was it possible for this process to go unhindered and the Ministry of the Interior started to carry out searches after the first round of voting when the results shocked many? All the information about the corruption of voters came from the press, not from the criminal investigation bodies. What is done now will have no impact. It is hard to imagine that you can impose fines to 300,000 people. Many fines will be challenged in court. As for the criminal cases that Viorel Cernăuțeanu talked about, I don't think that there will be a conviction sentence earlier than in 3-4 years. I don't think it's possible that 300,000 people receive money and the police don't know about it. Cernăuțeanu’s conference would have made sense in June, but the people were left to act unrestrictedly," stated Alexandru Tănase.
On Thursday, the head of the General Police Inspectorate Viorel Cernăuțeanu announced that 138,000 people received financial transfers to influence the result of last Sunday's ballot. According to him, between September and October, the law enforcement officers documented transfers of up to $39 million that was intended to compromise the election result.
