“European Action” signals out contradictions in new law on political parties

The “European Action” social-political movement (MAE) plans to organize a round-table to be joined by interested politicians and Justice Ministry officials to tackle matters related to the implementation of the new law of parties, Info-Prim Neo reports. The deputy president of the movement, Nicolae Roşca, told a news conference on Tuesday, April 22, that after studying the text of the law, published later in February, he discovered more contradictions and provisions that can be construed differently. One of them is the request to include the phrase “political party” into their full names, as the Constitution stipulates the freedom of association in parties and other social-political movements, as is the case of the “European Action” Movement. “The implementation of the new law means that MAE shall become a political party. Thus we find a contradiction with the constitutional provisions,” Nicolae Rosca has underlined. He has said the new law contains clauses absent in the old law. Thus the parties shall operate modifications till October 1 and to describe their permanent symbols and the way of designating delegates to general assemblies. What means that actually all the parties will have to organize congresses, while the time for that is too short. Another questionable issue is art. 2 which provides that the leadership bodies, the structures of political parties shall gave their quarters on the territory under R. Moldova’s jurisdiction. In the conditions when now the constitutional power of Moldova does not cover the Transnistrian area, it is not clear whether structures can be organized in that area, MAE’s deputy president underlined. The new law reduces the minimum number of party members from 5,000 to 4,000. At the same time, the law expressly empowers the Justice Ministry to dissolve the parties not participating in two consecutive elections or which gain less than 4,000 ballots. “Certain democratic principles are violated. It is known, they make negative propaganda against smaller parties in electoral races, pretending they don’t have chances to pass the threshold. The risk for them is not top gather those 4,000 votes. Yet it is not MAE’s case,” MAE’s President Anatol Petrencu said. He has spoken of the confusions related to funding parties. The new law bans the direct or indirect funding of parties by Moldovan citizens living abroad. It is not clear whether the party members temporarily working abroad will be able to pay their membership fees. “We have party members working in Spain because of the situation in the country and they want to help us, but the law does not allow them to. Is it legal for relatives coming back from abroad to make donations? We want to discuss these matters with the Fiscal Inspectorate and with the Justice Ministry,” Petrencu said. The Moldovan law on parties was passed in December 2007 and published in February, 2008.