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Conservative Party filed papers for getting registration as electoral competitor in the parliamentary elections of November 28, 2010 and could be included under number 15 on the ballot because it was the only applicant on October 13.

Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has asked Parliament to provide interpretation regarding the possibility to initiate a referendum on granting the status of state language to the Russian language. This initiative comes from a group of citizens from ATU Gagauzia, which authorized on September 29 the Mayor of Comrat to collect signatures to initiate referendum, and he addressed the CEC to get registration and subscription lists. Proceeding from the consideration that this initiative comes from a group of citizens and not from a political entity, CEC members decided that this action may be regulated under the Law on popular initiative to amend the Constitution, which provides for another procedure, through the Ministry of Justice, without the involvement of CEC.

ADEPT Note: The ordinary law no.387/19.07.2001 on popular initiative to revise the Constitution lays down the procedures for implementing the right of at least 200,000 Moldovan citizens with voting tights to initiate the revision of the Supreme Law. Under this law, the draft law that is presented as a popular initiative to revise the Constitution shall be submitted by authors to the Ministry of Justice for registration. Within 10 days after registration of the draft law, the Ministry of Justice shall make its preliminary legal expertise, and on expiry of this term, the Ministry of Justice shall send the draft law and list of authors to the RM Official Gazette to be published. The signatures shall be collected on lists the sample of which shall be designed by the Ministry of Justice, and may begin only in one month after the draft law is published in the Official Gazette and shall not last longer than 3 months after publication. Lists with collected signatures must include signatures of Moldovan citizens with voting rights and have their permanent residence in at least half of administrative-territorial units of the second level, with 20,000 signatures registered in each of them. Within 21 days after the submission of the lists with collected signatures, the Ministry of Justice shall verify their authenticity, and afterwards the Board of the Ministry of Justice shall take one of the following decisions: on acceptance of the popular initiative to revise the Constitution; on non-acceptance of the popular initiative to revise the Constitution if the required number of signatures was not accumulated. If the popular initiative to review the Constitution was accepted, the Ministry of Justice, within two days, shall provide the Constitutional Court with the draft law on amending the Constitution. Further examination of the draft law presented as popular initiative to revise the Constitution shall be made in accordance with the Constitution through the Parliament. Parliament shall declare invalid any popular initiative to revise the Constitution if the principle of material unity is broken: “an intrinsic relationship should exist among all elements of the Constitution”.

The party Our Moldova Alliance (AMN) has officially launched the electoral campaign for parliamentary elections of November 28. AMN candidates received identification cards from the party leadership in a ceremony that started with laying flowers at the monument of Stefan the Great and a “Te Deum”, officiated by priests from the Metropolitan Church of Moldova. AMN electoral slogan in the campaign slogan is “We do our duty. We go ahead”, and its representatives declared they will not make alliance with Communists and will not betray. AMN states it has the most powerful list of candidates, which includes 38 women.

The party “Moldova Unita — Единая Молдова” has chosen its slogan to run in parliamentary elections — “We will bring order in the country”. The party seeks “to establish order in the economy, in the country’s domestic and foreign policy, in the area of interethnic relations and social policy”. The electoral platform priorities include the return of “gasterbaiters”, supervision over the way of setting out the tariffs for natural gas, electricity and utilities, and if it will get to power, it will hold a referendum on the name of the state language and on granting a special constitutional status to Russian language. The Leader of “United Moldova”, Vladimir Turcan, stated he would favour a post-election alliance with left-wing parties or the right ones, however he was sceptical on cooperation with the PCRM.

ADEPT Note: It is remarkable that exactly on October 13, 2010, the Civil and Administrative Board of the Supreme Court of Justice accepted the appeal filed by the party “United Moldova” and cancelled the ruling of the Chisinau Court of Appeal dated September 15, 2010, whereby the lawsuit application filed by the party “United Moldova” against ANRE Moldova JSC “Moldovagaz”, contesting the administrative act (natural gas tariffs), was struck out. The Supreme Court submitted the case for trial to Chisinau Court of Appeal, and the party representatives interpret this decision as a reversal of the increased gas tariffs and thus — a social victory of the party.