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All 1987 polling stations open within the country and inside the diplomatic missions of the Republic of Moldova abroad are ready for the conduct of the July 29 parliamentary elections, informed CEC Secretary, Iurie Ciocan at a press conference today. He said that today CEC has sent the ballots to all District Electoral Councils, which on their turn will disseminate the balltos to the eletoral bureaus of the polling stations. (Moldpres)

The capital city is prepared for the July 29 parliamentary elections, the secretary of the Chisinau Municipal Council Valeriu Didencu said at Monday’s meeting of the City Hall. 297 polling stations have been set up in Chisinau. 55 of them are located in suburbs. Compared with the April 5 elections, there will be by four polling stations more — three in Botanica district and one in Budesti village. As many as 5,331 persons with permanent residence visas outside Chisinau asked to be allowed to vote in the capital city, 518 of whom in suburban settlements. Didencu said that all the electoral bureaus work normally, and the voter rolls have been posted. The lists can be also checked over the Internet. Only the composition of electoral bureaus situated in Botanica district was modified. (Info-Prim Neo)

According to the data by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) there are 785 candidates for 101 parliamentary seats. Thus, women constitute 28.9% of the total number of the parliamentary candidates, whereas in accordance with the European standards the admissible minimum is 30%. The average age of the candidates is 43 years. The majority of candidates are younger that 30 years, there are 48 such people among the PPCD candidates and only 12 — in the Party of Communists. The majority of candidates over 60 years old are members of the Party of Communists — 14, there are only two of such members among the PL candidates. Overall there are 73 independent candidates on parties’ electoral lists. (Infotag)

Eleven Georgians, members of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO) has been detained at the airport and refused the entry in the country. Serghei Tkacenco, head of the ENEMO Observation Mission declared that nobody has told them the reason for interdiction applied to Georgian election observers. “Their passports were taken away and they have been isolated. They were told that would be sent back to Tbilisi tomorrow evening”, said Tkacenco. According to him, today the Central Electoral Commission should have been issued accreditations to Georgian observers, but for unknown reasons this issue was not raised at the CEC sitting. Last week we submitted an application for 140 observers from different countries, and CEC wrote invitations for all the persons. Lately, CEC decided to issue accreditations to only 53 observers, and we were told verbally that the Security and Information Service (SIS) decided that the others “are not worthy of observing elections in the Republic of Moldova”, explained Tkacenco. According to him, the observers from Georgia and Kirgizstan did not receive accreditation from CEC. (strireazilei.md)

The League for Defense of Human Rights of Moldova (LADOM) has presented the third monitoring report of the election campaign for the July 29 legislative elections. The misuse of public resources for the election runners’ benefit, the intimidation of voters and offering of electoral presents are only some of violations identified by LADOM observers. “If we take into account all infringements of the electoral legislation mentioned in the report, we can say that the July 29 elections will not be free or, in the best case, will be partly free,” Paul Strutzescu, the president of LADOM, told a news conference on Monday. Strutzescu said that unlike the previous reports, the quality of election campaign and of methods used by the electoral contestants has worsened. The LADOM observers also said that many electoral advertisements have been placed in unauthorized places. (Info-Prim Neo)

Four televisions — N4, NIT, Moldova 1 and EuTV — massively covered the representatives of the government and of the PCRM and the PPCD in news, found observers from the Electronic Press Association (APEL) in a last monitoring report of the main Chisinau televisions in the election race. The report covers the period July 12–21, 2009. “At the same time, opposition representatives were treated on those televisions in a negative and disfavoring context,” is another finding of the report made public in a news conference, on July 27. “Compared with the previous weeks, regress has been noticed especially on NIT and Moldova, regress that may reduce the political pluralism in newscasts,” said university professor Constantin Marin, an expert within the project. The monitors also noticed a selective trend on behalf of N4, NIT, Moldova 1 in using multiple sources in conflict-related news. Thus, the reports covering the PCRM members, as a rule, did not present opinions of the opposition representatives criticized by the PCRM, while the reports from the opposition’s events did contain opinions of the criticized PCRM representatives and of the government. (Info-Prim Neo)

The Liberal Party (PL), the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) and the Moldova Noastra (Our Moldova) Alliance (AMN) have expressed confidence in their joint victory in the July 29 snap parliamentary elections. The three party leaders stated this at a news conference on Monday. The PL leader Mihai Ghimpu stressed the Republic of Moldova just cannot and should not develop any further in the conditions of poverty and dictatorship and expressed his confidence that “the change will come on July 29”. The PLDM leader, Vlad Filat said the opposition had withheld “the onslaught of the devilish Communist machine… Last June 3, we won a common victory. And on July 29 we ought to make our final effort to throw the criminal Voronin regime to the dumpsite of history. We shall win by acting together”. The AMN Chairman, Serafim Urechean expressed pride of parliamentarians from the PL, PLDM and AMN “who demonstrated faithfulness to their voters and the whole country… On July 29, it is necessary to make a choice between darkness and the light future. The opposition shall further be demonstrating unity in order to resolve the problems the Republic of Moldova is facing”. (Infotag)

The Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) says that Moldova has witnessed the longest, dirtiest and harshest election campaign ever and the irresponsibility of certain politicians can degenerate into a real civil war that would endanger Moldova’s statehood. At a news conference where the PDM closed it election campaign, the party headed by Marian Lupu presented seven destructive factors. Andrei Popov, the no. 4 candidate on the PDM electoral list, considers that the election campaign went a wrong way from the very beginning, when the contestants focused on the April 7 events, instead of centering on the serious problems faced by the country. “The use of images of persons beaten and killed during the Aril 7 events in advertisements is a moral crime,” Andrei Popov said According to the PDM, the electoral confrontation in Moldova is a struggle for death or life. There are many victims of the settling of accounts or even deaths. Young people died. Torture is used and many lies are employed. At the same time, the PDM considers that the xenophobic rhetoric has reappeared suddenly. The people are divided into “ours” and “the others”. They are threatened and discriminated according to ethnic criteria. The PDM members called upon the population to exercise their right to vote and choose a balanced and competent political force. (Info-Prim Neo)

The election race has been full of breaches, aggressive and tense in the districts close to the Transnistrian area. The electoral lists were not posted in due time in polling stations, some of them contained names of minors or dead people, votes got intimidated, and administrative resources were used for electoral purposes. These are some of the conclusions of the third monitoring report on parliamentary elections compiled by the Promo-Lex Association, which was made public on July 27 at a news conference. According to Promo-Lex president Ion Manole, almost all the electoral contestants committed breaches from July 19 to 26. In particular, the situation of compiling the voter lists raise worries. At the same time, the national intolerance and hate-related discourses continued to be promoted, electoral competitors were treated unfairly by representatives of local public administration, public agency employees got involved in the election process, while the electoral rights and freedoms of voters from the Transnistrian area went on being ignored, although the situation is noticed to be improving, Ion Manole specified. (Info-Prim Neo)

The State Enterprise “Posta Moldovei” (Post Office of Moldova) rejects the accusations by several media of promoting the Party of Communists (PCRM) and informs that the brochures qualified as electoral advertising are just a way to promote the company’s services during the crisis. According to a company’s notification, on July 24, the CEC members investigated the PLDM contestation that accused the enterprise to have made electoral advertising in favor of PCRM and claimed that the booklet with the text “Choose the number one Postal Operator of Moldova” was no electoral advertising. The enterprise administration also says that the brochures qualified as electoral advertising are just materials with the services rendered by “Posta Moldovei” across Moldova and outside it. At the same time, the company’s administration stressed that while developing the advertising brochures, including the booklet with the text “Choose the number one Post Operator of Moldova”, they took into account the idea that the material should have the colors of Moldova’s Flag. The booklet “Choose the number one Post Operator of Moldova” is the first out of nine advertising booklets to be published. (Basa-press)

Liberal oppositional parties “have built up their election campaign on deception and lies”, the head of the PCRM electoral headquarters, Mark Tkaciuk declared at a news conference on Monday. In his opinion, the opposition does not have any serous claims against the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) and thus, there is no reason to criticize the PCRM. “The opposition used primitive lies during the previous and current campaigns. Lie number 1 was about rigging the elections. Since April 5, no opposition leader has brought any evidence that those elections would have been rigged. Nobody has that evidence. Neither the Central Electoral Commission, nor the Council of Europe, nor society. But the information about rigging the elections was the reason for the youth to take to streets on April 7,” Tkaciuk explained. The PCRM candidate has also accused his opponents spreading information through which they try to undermine the PCRM. (Moldpres)

The Moldova Noastra (Our Moldova) Alliance (AMN) has maintained that though the current campaign for the July 29 early elections was short, it was the dirtiest one. “The opposition’s rights have been violated. We were not given the right of reply in the mass media. Our representatives in districts and villages have been aggressed, while the police destroyed the AMN’s campaign posters,” the AMN Chairman, Serafim Urecheanu said at a news conference on Monday. The AMN leader also said that the Communist dignitaries received by 6,500 lei a month for misinforming the population. Speaking about the coverage of AMN in the mass media during the election campaign, the AMN candidate Victor Osipov said that all their observations were included in a monitoring report that will be submitted to the international organizations that have offices in Moldova and to the embassies that will supervise the July 29 elections. Another AMN candidate Veaceslav Platon, who has recently been a suspect in a case of forging US$2 million, said that “a lie is the motto of the Party of Communists”. (Info-Prim Neo)

The April 7 tragedy should never repeat. The logic of destruction resides in the fact that the members of the parliamentary parties have old, Soviet mentality, members of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (PPCD) said at a news conference held in front of the Parliament’s building on July 27. “We should not treat the parties as good and bad as they all are composed of citizens of this country. The parliamentary parties have members with old, Soviet mentality that hinders the cooperation between the parties” said Victor Ciuru, a candidate on behalf of the PPCD. “The politicians should not use hatred as ideology and as attitude towards the others. In a democracy, the ruling party and the opposition parties must avoid hostility and disputes,” said the PPCD candidates, whose electoral list is topped by members of its young wing. (Info-Prim Neo)

The Ecological Party of Moldova “Alianta Verde (Green Alliance)” (PEAVM) accuses the other parties running in elections of promoting aggressiveness among the voters. “The political parties have an aggressive electoral behavior. They use exaggerated amounts of money and lay emphasis on the April 7 protests, disorientating the voters even more. Most of those that run in elections divide the society into black and white,” PEAVM Chairman Vladimir Braga said at a news conference on Monday. According to Braga, the aggressiveness is tolerated because the people forgot about God, while the parties show once again that they did not manage to hold talks to solve the problems faced by the society. He said that if PEAVM enters the Parliament, they will propose a bill to introduce religion as school discipline. The Greens say that Moldova can overcome the economic, ecological and political crises only if the problems are addressed from an ecological angle. The PEAVM members promise that if they enter the Parliament they will create 100,000 workplaces at small and medium-sized enterprises. (Info-Prim Neo)

The “Actiunea Europeana” (European Action) Movement (MAE) urges voters to go and vote on Wednesday. The Movement opines that “Moldova’s future outlook depends on everybody” and “we can change everything with one vote”. MAE leader Anatol Petrencu stated on Monday — the last day of the race — that “the voters must realize that we pass through a historic moment.” He calls on voters “not to be lazy.” He has told the MAE’s supporters to vote for one of those three opposition parties: the Liberal Party, Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova and Moldova Noastra (Our Moldova) Alliance, because, only with the help of the Moldovan democratic forces, a genuinely democratic regime will be installed. (Info-Prim Neo)

The strengthening of the relationship between Moldova and Poland, between Moldova and the European Union, depends on the free and fair conduct of the July parliamentary elections, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski stated in Chisinau on Friday, July 24. The Polish minister also said that the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict and of problems Moldova has with its neighbors depends on the democratization process. Radoslaw Sikorski has also met Moldova’s acting president Vladimir Voronin, opposition and civil society leaders. The minister has also represented the Swedish presidency of the EU and the Greek presidency of the OSCE. “Free elections do not mean only counting ballots, but also media freedom, correct compilation of voter lists, democratic conditions for all electoral contestants”, said Radoslaw Sikorski. Moldova’s foreign minister Andrei Stratan said that “Sikorski’s visit in the election race demonstrates the EU’s interest for not allowing the repetition of a new chaos in Moldova.” “We are certain this poll will hold according to the European requirements. It is in everybody’s interest that the political situation in Moldova should stabilize and we should continue on our European integration way”, Stratan said. (Info-Prim Neo)

A non-governmental organization titling itself as “The Civil Society Congress” declares its support for the Party of Communists in the July 29 snap parliamentary elections. “The political parties have divided into two parts. One deals with political skirmishes, the other — with defending the state’s interests and with fighting the economic crisis,” NGO leader Iuri Parfionov reasoned his option at a news conference on July 27. The NGO leader has said the April protests have been the key debate topic in this race, “and only the PCRM has managed to overcome the problem”. The Civil Society Congress says it gets ready legal modifications to prevent a possible repetition of the April events, but gave no details. A member of the Civil Society Congress, Dorian Pilacau, is part of the commission decreed by the president to investigate the April events. (Info-Prim Neo)

The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections — “Coalition 2009” asks the members of the Audiovisual Coordinating Council (CCA) to work in strict accordance with the Audiovisual Code, and not according to their own likes or dislikes, a statement of “Coalition 2009” reads. “Coalition 2009”’s appeal has been made after a recent sitting of CCA, when its members decided not to penalize the broadcasters monitored during the campaign as violating the Regulation on media coverage of elections and the Audiovisual Code. “Under the law, CCA shall penalize the broadcasters violating the law, but, despite these rules, CCA just issued a general recommendation for all the broadcasters. It required them to observe opinion pluralism in covering conflict-related topics”, according to the communiqué by “Coalition 2009”. “Coalition 2009” members consider that CCA neglects its own authority and encourages broadcasters to breach the law. (Info-Prim Neo)

The Moldova Noastra (Our Moldova) Alliance is pointing out the incumbent authorities’ unprecedented using of the law enforcement in the election campaign. The AMN wrote in its statement today, “It is an old unlawful practice of our incumbent leaders’, which they do not wish to stop despite addresses by electoral competitors and European organizations”. “Lately, have been growing cases when officials from prosecution organs, police, and various controlling organs unfoundedly accuse opposition parliamentary candidates of their involvement in illegal transactions or contacts with criminal circles. These accusation scenarios have been fabricated beforehand, are coordinated by the PCRM electoral headquarters, and are used before elections specially to restrict the possibilities of such insinuation victims to protect their right of a correct public image”, the document said. The AMN called upon power officers to give up fulfilling blindly the unlawful orders of their chiefs. (Infotag)

A campaign called “Adevarul” (the Truth), launched a month ago by the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) reached 750 Moldovan localities. Over 80,000 citizens have been informed by young Liberal Democrats about the April events. They preliminary summed up campaign results of on July 25, in Chisinau’s downtown. According to the PLDM’s Youth Organization, the Adevarul Campaign pursued to realize the events having occurred in Moldova after the April 5 elections, especially the arrests, ill-treatments and torture the young men were subjected to, as four of them died. (Info-Prim Neo)