Public policy expert Ștefan Gligor said the parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019 cannot be called free and fair and there are hundreds of conclusive proofs, starting with the electoral reform and ending with the method of conducing the election campaign, and steps in this regard started to be taken tacitly many months before the legislative elections, IPN reports.
Ștefan Gligor made the statements on Jurnal TV channel after the candidate of the electoral bloc ACUM DA PAS Dinu Plângău announced he was attacked by three persons in front of the Edineț Police Inspectorate on January 27. On January 28, it became known that an electoral poster of the ACUM candidate in Ungheni was vandalized several hours after it was set up.
The expert said the third monitoring report presented recently by Promo-LEX Association says the Association’s observers were threatened and intimidated. “This is an episode that shows once again how vitiated and perverse this process and the period we call election campaign are,” stated Ștefan Gligor.
Former presidential adviser Vlad Țurcanu said such incidents at the start of the election campaign do not inspire optimism. When no prompt action is taken, messages are indirectly transmitted to police officers and some of the noisier electoral contenders that something like this is allowed. “It is a police mission that should be taken very seriously so as to discourage such manifestations and not allow things to degenerate,” stated the journalist.
He noted the ordinary citizens and the electoral contenders should understand that such incidents affect a lot the image of the current election campaign, Hypothetically speaking, if the legitimacy of the upcoming elections is ever challenged, such cases can serve as case studies invoked by international and national institutions. “Surely, it is hard to believe that the current Constitutional Court, after being filled with fervent supporters of the ruling party, can take such events into account. But there are also other national and international entities,” stated Vlad Țurcanu.
