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Opinion
June 30, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 21
Instead of addressing the concerns of the protest- ers, the politically controlled media and politicians ridiculed the protesters and launched a misin- formation campaign describing “massive citizen support” and “public consensus” in favour of the electoral reform.
Moldova’s government is slowly crippling the free press, causing the country to fall in international rankings on press freedom. Meanwhile, the gov- ernment’s lack of transparency prevents investi- gative journalists from uncovering the truth, and opacity breeds further corruption. Because dis- senting opinions are discouraged and peaceful protests are curbed, citizens’ freedom of speech is under threat.
“Transparency International Moldova is against this [electoral] change because it changes the rules of the game before elections and gives ad- vantage to a party that has compromised itself,” said Lilia Carasciuc, executive director of Trans- parency International in Moldova. “They know
best how to rig the system because they are the system. The Democratic party has lied and ma- nipulated the people while promoting this reform and the draft law has multiple flaws. It is designed to keep the Democratic party in power, eventually with the pro-Russian [Socialist party] PSRM.”
Other countries in the region that adopted uninominal or mixed electoral systems have experienced greater political corruption while new, emerging parties find themselves locked out, and minorities, women and the diaspora are often underrepresented in national parliaments. In countries like Ukraine and Georgia, oligarchs have risen to power and are able to exploit
the uninominal or mixed systems to “buy” sympathetic candidates and aggressively fund their campaigns, virtually eliminating any other contenders.
Moldova has been under the shadow of its own oligarchic system, which has strong links to the Democratic party. With an agenda of market re-
form and European integration, they were able to seize control of the government, the parliament, and many other key state institutions such as the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Justice, to name a few. In addition, oligarchs own most of the media outlets and TV channels and have financial interests in many sectors of the economy.
However, a public opinion poll conducted in April noted negative opinions about the oligarchic sys- tem, and the Democratic party is polling at just 3.7% of popular support, down from 15% in the November 2014 parliamentary elections.
The reason for such abysmal popularity among voters is that under the watch of a governing coalition from 2010 to 2014, $1bn was stolen from the National Bank reserves and more than $20bn was laundered to European Union banks. The Democratic party was a member of the coalition, and the institutions that were supposed to safe- guard the Moldovan financial system were and are controlled by the party. Instead of investigating the extraordinary theft and money laundering case, authorities have muddled the process and are try- ing to make it all vanish from public scrutiny.
With Moldova’s continued slide into authoritarian- ism, it does not look like its citizen’s legitimate concerns will be addressed anytime soon.
Dumitru Alaiba is programme director at the Center for Policy and Reform in Moldova. Previously, he worked with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as head of secretariat of the Eco- nomic Council under the office of Moldova’s prime minister. He blogs at Black on White in Romanian and English.
Natalia Otel Belan is deputy regional director for Europe, Eurasia and South Asia at the Center for In- ternational Private Enterprise (CIPE) in Washington DC. She works on such issues as business advocacy, democratic governance, anti-corruption and ethics, and entrepreneurship ecosystems.