Investigative reporters to monitor party lists for 2009 elections

The civil society intends to monitor the lists on which political parties will run in the legislative elections in 2009. This initiative was discussed Friday, October 17, at a roundtable meeting which was also attended by representatives of political parties and governmental authorities, Info-Prim Neo reports. The initiative, which is supposed to be launched in the near future, belongs to a consortium of NGOs, including the Association for Participatory Democracy ADEPT, the Investigative Journalism Center, the Independent Journalism Center the Independent Press Association, the Center for Analysis, the Acces-Info Center, and Soros Foundation Moldova. Olesea Stamate, program director at Soros Foundation Moldova, informed that the monitoring of the party lists will be part of the campaign themed “For a Clean Parliament”, which is analogous to those conducted in Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. The civil society will select a group of investigative reporters, who will try to build up dossiers on every member of the party lists, using integrity criteria. According to the director of the Investigative Journalism Center, Cornelia Cozonac, the organizations will then suggest the parties strike out the names of the candidates who don't match these criteria. Among the criteria which are to be established jointly with the political parties are party-switching, withholding information on the actual size of property and incomes, misuse of authority, maladministration (in particular, which led to lawsuits being lost by the government at the European Court of Human Rights), undemocratic conduct (involvement in political scandals, injurious statements), etc. Prior to this initiative, the organizers held discussions with the political parties deemed to have high chances of entering Parliament, which will result in cooperation agreements being signed with each party. However, this will not be a precondition for the monitoring process. The initiative group assures that the political parties refusing to sign such agreements will also be monitored, yet they will be in a less favorable position compared to those which will agree. The latter will be announced of the detected flaws and will be advised to remove the untrustworthy candidates before the results of the monitoring are made known to the general public. The representatives of political parties who joined the round table saluted the initiative. “We acknowledge the fact that this project is in our best interest too, but the one to gain the most from it is the voter”, said Liberal Democrat leader Vlad Filat. “Any party from the opposition is interested in an audit of the electoral lists, after their opponents have been in power for eight years”, remarked Victor Osipov, the spokesman for the Moldova Noastra Alliance Party. At the same time, the representatives of political parties pointed out that it is necessary to apply a fine-tuned methodology and the used criteria must be measurable and relevant. They also warned that the information contained in the monitoring reports could be selectively cited by the media instruments of certain parties and used against their competitors. “I'm afraid that neither the civil society nor the independent media, which is quite weak, will be able to withstand the wave of propaganda coming from the opposing side...”, said Igor Klipii, vice-president of the Democratic Party. The chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Eugeniu Stirbu, said the CEC is ready to support this initiative and he is open to collaboration both with the civil society and the political parties. The representatives of the Communists' Party and of the People's Christian Democratic Party failed to attend the roundtable meeting.