PSD, PDM hold talks on possible merger

“Dumitru Diacov, the leader of the Democratic Party (PDM), hurried to tell media that, after the possible merger with the Social-Democratic Party (PSD), the name of the new party will be “the Democratic Party.”” The statement was made on Tuesday at a news conference by the Social-Democratic leader Dumitru Braghis, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to him, the merger idea is still discussed, as well as the name of the new party. The MP has said he is not worried with the electoral threshold of 6% and does not fear the PSD will not enter the Parliament after the 2009 elections. According to him, opinion polls show the party is going to get 7 % of ballots. “The aim of merging the two parties is to create a social-democratic force in Moldova,” Dumitru Braghis specified. Speaking about the initiative of the liberal parties to get together for the race, the PSD leader has said the center-left electorate's interest does not interfere with the one of the liberal parties. “If those parties were strong enough to recognize this and not to attack us, both their and our results would be much nicer,” Braghis said. He has stated PSD has been and is an opposition party. But, when there are common approaches, PSD will anyway vote with different parties. The PSD president has remarked such a coincidence occurred in the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC). “The experience shows the decision to change the CMC leadership proved to be right,” Dumitru Braghis said, mentioning the CMC, under Eduard Musuc's rule, managed to approve of 560 decisions, compared with 465 passed in the first 6 months of the year, when the Council was led by the Liberal Mihai Ghimpu. On Monday, the PDM leader, Dumitru Diacov, commented the merger idea at a news conference. “The conclusion we reached is it would be good to go on the lists of a single party and we proposed to go on the lists of the PDM. It's a very delicate situation, created by the modifications in the Electoral Code, we know there are people backing the idea, but there are also forces interested to torpedo it. The final step should be the merger of the two parties, and thus only one strong party will remain on the center-left segment, of social-democratic orientation,” Dumitru Diacov said.