alegeri.md

Electoral ads are practically absent in Chisinau municipality albeit one month passed since electoral campaign started. A number of private TV and radio stations refused to air electoral ads, thereby creating an informational vacuum. Nevertheless, Party of Communists’ candidates in their capacity of public officers and state leaders come up with initiatives already included in the Communist electoral platform, which is widely covered by public and private media alike, including the media outlets that refused to cover electoral campaign. This refers specifically to Republican Forum on launching the National Program “Moldovan Village”. Smart move, legal, but not exactly fair.

Christian-Democratic Peoples’ Party believes that by declining Vitalie Nagacevschi’s right to represent the party in CEC, the Supreme Court of Justice committed a huge abuse. Supreme Court passed the judgement after CEC, and later on Court of Appeal had rejected the appeal of the Party of Communists’ representative to withdraw Vitalie Nagacevschi’s status as CDPP’s representative in CEC on the grounds he was on the CDPP’s candidate list. Communist Party representative cited Article 44(4) of the Electoral Code “Candidates in an election may not serve on any electoral council or precinct bureau during the period of that election.” CDPP claims that the said provision refers solely to councils and precinct bureaus and does not refer to the CEC. Article 14 of the Electoral Code stipulates which are the electoral bodies in RM: CEC, rayon electoral councils, precinct electoral bureaus. CEC is an exception as it is not involved directly in the voting procedure or vote count. The distinction was made just because the presence of candidates, even if they are only entitled to consultative vote, in the electoral bodies directly involved in voting procedure and voting counting is considered inappropriate. Again, this only refers to electoral bureaus and electoral councils (in the case of local elections in the localities where only one polling station is opened it also fulfils the functions of electoral councils).

Press service of the Moldova Democrata Bloc (BMD) reported that on January 24, 2005 “police has maltreated the team, which was lawfully setting on an electoral advertising board of the BMD. Police intervened before the banner was posted. The advertising material was taken by the police. The team of the advertising company contracted by the BMD had all the authorisations needed; nevertheless it was arrested and taken by force to police station. This incident is yet another evidence of the measures planned to chase and hamper the legal posting of electoral materials”.

“Ruling party is increasingly relying on brutal police instruments, absolute control over the state power and its resources, against BMD. Albeit this incident reveals its fear of BMD and of eventual failure in elections, ruling party should put an end to its abuses, unless it wants to jeopardize democratic elections even before they are held on March 6, 2005”.

Serafim Urechean, BMD leader informed Belgium’s representative to OSCE on the incident as well as on “many other abuses of the police and security, whom authorities had sent to the meetings with the voters”.

On January 25, 2005 Social Democratic Party of Moldova held a press conference to report on attempts by police to hamper its electioneering campaign in the rayons of the country. SDPM reported a number of cases when persons electioneering for the party were arrested and taken to rayon police station. SDPM’s harassment contrasts with the preferential treatment enjoyed by the Party of Communists — “Communists candidates Nicolae Bondarciuc and Nicolae Mindru met with the staff of the National Social Insurance Chamber and informed them on the party’s electoral program, documents approved at the recent party Congress” (Comunist no. 4, 19.01.2005). National Social Insurance Chamber is a public institution and is not the only one where ruling party is electioneering. On January 22, 2005 Vecernii Kishinev newspaper “loyal to the governing” reported that police gathered all the evidences related to the accident involving a Communist candidate. Among those evidences was a “list of enterprises and organisations that he was due to visit for electioneering purposes”. SDPM then concludes that each ruling party candidate have such a list and faced no problems.

SDPM was dissatisfied with the public broadcaster “Moldova 1” that “continues to violate citizens’ right to information and ignores any piece of information coming from SDPM”. According to them it is the obligation of the public broadcaster to inform the citizens about the violations, “as not only a party or electoral contestant is intimidated, but also citizens of the country are deprived of their right to information and their right to choose”. SDPM reserves the right to “notify international organisation about the behaviour of the public broadcaster «Moldova 1»”.