ELECTION CAMPAIGN WAS COMPROMISED DUE TO VARIOUS VIOLATIONS – PROMO-LEX

The February 24 parliamentary election campaign was compromised due to numerous violations, threatening and incitement to hatred and discrimination, says the final report of the Promo-LEX election monitoring mission.

Authors of the document, presented at the conference on Wednesday, pointed at the increased number of cases of using administrative resource and distributing gifts to voters, as well as at the fact that parties failed to mention around 5.2 million lei in their financial reports on the funds they spent for election campaign.

According to them, the election bodies fulfilled the work at proper level and within the law, but the procedure of calculating the votes and summarizing the election results was compromised by mistakes in filling the protocols and unjustified refusal to allow observers to get acquainted with these.

Promo-LEX Director Pavel Postica said that at the nationwide level the elections were competitive, as none of the registered parties was excluded during the election campaign, which cannot be said about the voting in single-member constituencies.

Parties became the main players in the recent election campaign, the experts say, because in single-member constituencies there were only 59 people as independent candidates (18%). Also, gender discrimination was registered, as the 40% quota for women in party lists was met formally due to placing woman candidates at the bottom of the lists.

Supervisors said that election competitors were in unequal conditions due to massive using of the administrative resource. The number of cases of using administrative resource grew eight-fold (to 536) against the 2016 presidential elections. Around 58% cases concern the Democratic Party, 21% - the Party of Socialists, 6% each – independent candidates and the ACUM election bloc, 4% - the Partidul Nostru. Also, 188 cases of distributing gifts to voters were registered, 37% of which account for the Shor Party, 36% - to PSRM, 21% - to DP.

The report mentions other discrepancies as well, among which the organized transportation of voters and cases of taking photos of voting bulletins.