Local Election runners can no more count on free air time
Local election aspirants have been deprived of the possibility to use free airtime at state-run television or radio to address to voters, as per the amendments introduced into the Election Code by the vote of 52 MPs in the 101-member Parliament of Moldova.
MP Tudor Deliu (LD) said that the June 5 local elections will involve up to 100 thousand candidates, and the public television and radio are just unable to provide 1 minute of airtime to each of them. This ban, however, does not apply to candidates taking part in parliamentary elections.
Deliu also said that in order to exclude ambiguity in the law, the Parliament has decided that the mandates of incumbent mayors and local council members shall expire on the election day of June 5, 2011, not on the day, when newly elected mayors and local deputies have their mandates officially approved, as was the rule before.
In his words, the much-spoken electronic voter register will not be introduced before the June 2011 local elections because its introduction time has been put off till year 2015.
Central Election Commission Secretary Iurie Ciocan stated in parliament that the Commission is ready to introduce the electronic register of voters, and for the sake of it, CEC members are ready to work even without Easter holidays.
Iurie Ciocan stated that as a matter of fact, the CEC has all necessary hardware and database all right, but unfortunately there is no proper infrastructure, and no reliable telecommunication between 2 thousand polling stations.
The Communists subjected the governing alliance to strong criticism for amending the electoral legislation just before an election, and for disregarding once again the Council of Europe's recommendations to not act in such a manner.
Communist Party staff lawyer MP Sergiu Sirbu stated, "You are again re-writing the rules of the game on the eve on an election campaign! You are simply correcting the mistakes, which you made in the legislation in great haste before elections last year".
And his party colleague Alexander Petkov accused the Parliament leadership of rigging the today's voting results. In his words, the majority alliance did not have enough deputies in the room at the voting moment for approving the Election Code amendments.
Also, the majority coalition decided to invalidate all the draft laws that were accepted and registered with the Parliament over 2 years ago, but failed to be considered till now.
Infotag
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