alegeri.md

On February 6, Social Democratic Party of Moldova (SDPM) gathered in the National Opera square “with 5,000 party members in attendance”. The party program Pro PSDM (PROgram of the People to build a socially-equitable, strong, and democratic state — Republic of Moldova). Arcadie Covaliov, who was arrested by police a week ago “spoke to his comrades about the violations and humiliation practiced by the Communists while fighting their political foes; that he himself experienced not so long ago”. SDPM leaders stated that they “would fight to seize majority in Parliament and establish a Social-Democrat Government”.

Independent Journalism Centre and Sociological, Political and Psychological Analysis and Investigation Centre CIVIS, Association of Free Press and international organisation “Article 19” released the first monitoring report (for the time period January 16–29, 2005) over the election coverage in mass media. Besides, bias of state-owned and private media, the report notes that “there is much concealed electoral advertising both in state-owned and private media, not marked as required by the CEC’s Regulation on election coverage in mass media. Great many newspapers did not allot space for electoral advertising, which might create some confusion among the readers”.

Federation of Students and Youth Organisations held a press conference demanding CEC to cancel its resolution providing that students should vote at the place of their registration rather than at place of residence. Organisation leaders demanded supplementary lists of students who have a temporary residence in the place where they study to be drawn so as to allow them to vote at the special polling stations.

During the CEC session when the aforesaid resolution was passed it was reported that in Chisinau there are about 80,000 resident students who are officially registered in their place of birth. The possibility of granting them a vacation on the eve of elections or a free of charge return ticket for those having official residence outside Chisinau was also discussed. If all the students were to travel free of charge to their official place of residence, then authorities would have to come up with 1.5 million Lei to cover for those expenses.

Transdniestrian press agency “Olvia-press” reacted to CEC message on conditions for opening polling stations in Transdniestria claiming that those were nothing but Chisinau’s “tricks”. According to the press agency, the latter did not want RM citizens residing in Transdniestria to cast their ballot for fear they would vote against Party of Communists.

Lately, Chisinau residents’ post boxes were stuffed with newsletters, among them an eight page A3 “Redisca” (Radish) (i.e. read outside — white inside) electioneering against Party of Communists and partly against Christian-Democrats. Anonymous authors of the humoristic publication mockingly claim that the 200,000 turnout was published at the Prag-3 printing house. This newsletter published illegally has drawn the attention for three reasons: a) official Transdniestrian press agency “Olvia-press” had announced about the publication one day prior to its distribution, on a day off, being the only news of the Saturday; b) the fact that the newsletter had been printed in Chisinau is questionable as both electoral contestants and printing houses report on constant controls from the police; c) “Olvia-press” agency stated that RM authorities had recently prohibited distribution of Transdniestrian publications on the soil of RM. Those factors point to the fact that “Redisca” was published in Transdniestria.