EARLY ELECTIONS CAN BE AVOIDED ONLY AT THE EXPENSE OF VIOLATING LAW – MP TURCAN
11.03.2010
There exist no legal ways for Moldova to avoid an early parliamentary election, presumes MP Vladimir Turcan, Chairman of the “Moldova Unită – Edinaia Moldova” (MUEM) party.
Turcan stated to your Infotag correspondent the governing majority erroneously believes that by means of staging a national referendum they can avoid an early dissolution of the incumbent Parliament.
It is his and his party comrades’ conviction that the would-be new Constitution, with its new norms and rules, must start working only with respect to next Parliament. As for the current Parliament, it has already exhausted the two attempts to elect head of state given to it by the current Constitution, so the forum must be disbanded.
Political scientist Bogdan Tardea commented the ongoing metamorphosis of the Liberal Democratic Party leader, Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat as follows: only very recently, Filat believed the political crisis in Moldova can only be overcome by holding an early parliamentary election. Now he has changed his mind – not without the participation of the rest constituent parties of the governing Alliance for European Integration.
“They could well tell him they had fulfilled all his demands – dismissed Ion Muruianu as Supreme Court Chairman, kept silence when Filat was putting forward his extraordinary, exotic initiatives, so now it is your turn to act the way we are demanding”, presumes Tardea.
He does not see whatever point for Filat to preserve the present-day composition of forces in the ruling alliance, when the Liberal Party of Mihai Ghimpu and the Moldova Noastra Alliance of Serafim Urechean are remaining in power.
Independent Moldovan experts are pointing out that it is practically impossible to organize and hold a nation-wide referendum on a new Constitution within such a short period of time, by the upcoming June 16, as the governing alliance is intending. With reference to the initiative by the commission for amending the Electoral Code, the experts are reminding that in order to amend the 1994 Constitution or adopt a new one, it is first necessary to receive a Constitutional Court conclusion on the changes being proposed, after which the okayed changes can be introduced only in 6 months’ time.
According to the Kishinevsky Obozrevatel newspaper, the commission has stood up with an initiative to lower the voter turnout norm for referendums down to a simple majority of 50% – from the current three-fifths (60%) of citizens on voter registers.
In parallel, opposition political formations are not wasting time, either, though these forces are fairly heterogeneous and disunited. Besides the parliamentary opposition Communist Party (MCP), which has perceived the AEI actions as usurping of state power, a definitely negative attitude to the ongoing developments is being showed also by the Christian Democratic Popular Party and the Social Democratic Party.
Sources in the MCP are saying the Communists have already started raising citizens’ signatures for organizing a vote of no confidence in the incumbent authorities. However, to hold such a referendum, the Parliament is supposed to approve the enterprise first, but the Communists currently have only 43 mandates in the 101-member legislative forum.
Forecasting the possible development of the situation, the experts are offering a supposition that a Committee for Defending the Constitution may be set up in Moldova, which may comprise the opposition Moldovan Communist Party and a number of small parties and movements, which do not support the ruling coalition but, simultaneously, dissociate themselves from the Communists’ policy.
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