At its sitting on April 18, CEC has rejected the draft decision regarding the Liberal Party (LP) and Social Liberal Party (SLP) appeals on the annulment of the Chisinau electoral district council decision (CEDC), which allows receiving of the necessary documents for the registration of the candidates to the Chisinau mayor office. The draft decision was presented by CEC deputy president, Renata Lapti. She mentioned that “CEDC is in charge of establishing and informing the wide public about the date and place where documents necessary for electoral registration can be presented. Issues of this kind are to be discussed at the Council sitting and to be approved by the means of a decision”. CEC took a break for additional consultations and after the sitting resumption has voted with 3 votes pro, 2 against and 2 abstentions (2 CEC members were absent at the voting procedure). The CEC President, Eugen Stirbu, has stated that CEC will come back to the issues raised by this appeal, so as to give a clear-cut answer to appellants. To this end, it is to be assumed that the CEC vote consents the CEDC actions to start receiving from April 13 the necessary documents for the registration of electoral contestants. At the CEC sitting were present the leadership of the CEDC, appellants, interested observers and mass media. Some other issues came out at the sitting. CEDC representatives were not unanimous in their statements, they were accusing of misguiding each other and the media. As a result of misguiding, some press agencies and radio stations have informed that CEDC will receive the necessary documents for the registration of candidates only on April 17. After about 2 hours, the same mass media came back with brief notes stating that CEDC was going to receive documents starting with April 13. After a while, it was found out that the Party of Communists representatives have presented the documents for the registration of Veaceslav Iordan as candidate for the Chisinau mayor office. Shortly, representatives of other four parties have decided to present their documents, including the appellant parties. According to Mihai Ghimpu, chairman of the Liberal Party, CEDC has started to register candidates on April 13, after April 17 was announced as the date to start the registration. “We have decided to present on April 13 the documents for the registration of the Liberal Party candidate to the Chisinau mayor office, when we found out that other parties did this already. However, we consider this CEDC decision at odds with the electoral legislation”. The latter move has put appellants in a difficulty as they would appeal a CEDC decision, initially disregarded to get benefit from. The second argument of the CEC members to reject the LP and SLP appeals was that, based on a Supreme Court of Justice judgement, informing the wide public about the date and place of receiving the documents for the registration is to be done by the means of printed press or radio and TV stations broadcasting. Ion Cretu, the CEDC president, has mentioned that his actions were legal, as CEDC started to receive the documents for the registration after a radio station had aired his disposal with regard to the period and place of performing the procedure. This problem is to be solved yet as the Social Democratic Party of Moldova has appealed the same CEDC decision to the Chisinau Court of District Centre, which has to take a decision by April 20.
In other regions the candidates registration process has started as well as with problems. The representatives of some parties running in this election campaign have demanded equal conditions for Balti elective offices race. They appealed the actions of Balti Electoral District Council (BEDC), which would register in an unfair way some electoral contestants. Though, a definite day was announced to start receiving the files with documents, representatives of several political forces and independent candidates have found out that at the first working our were presented already the documents from the side of 7 electoral contestants (PCRM, DPM, independent candidates). Was found out also that the commission to organise a draw of the candidates registration order was not yet set up. In the end, the CEDC members have decided to annul the registrations made out of the announced period and to establish a new day to start receiving the documents. (after Deca-press and Reporter.md)
