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21 May 2015 // Chisinau 22 electoral stakeholders used administrative resources, and other nine used electoral presents to promote themselves. These are some of the most severe violations recorded by Promo-LEX Association, which presented on 21 May the second Report of the Observation Mission of the General Local Election of 14 (28) June 2015. The report covers the period of 30 April – 20 May 2015 and reflects the electoral processes of the Republic of Moldova, as reported by Promo-LEX observers.

Most violations included in the report refer to the financing of the political parties. Promo-LEX experts found that only five of the nine election candidates that submitted reports to CEC, have reported their revenue and expenditures. At the same time, only four citizens contributed with MDL 950 thousand to the parties’ electoral funds. “The sources of funding stated as membership fees are still unclear”. Other funds worth MDL 3,418,200 were declared as donations from legal entities. Most expenses reported by election candidates were related to advertising – 83.1%. No election candidate has reflected during this period real expenses related to rental fees and maintenance of their permanent offices, salaries and remuneration” says Cornelia Calin, financial analyst of Promo-LEX Observation Mission.

In addition, Promo-LEX established that, unlike the previous election campaigns, during this campaign only several candidates started the electoral run with various promotion activities. They organized the traditional launches, meetings with voters, concerts, distributed promotional materials, placed outdoor and media advertising, tents, etc. At the same time, the local and regional media was passive, and the observers reported only five cases when it was used as an electoral instrument.

“We may state that during the monitored period CEC had an ordinary working regime. It recorded another electoral block and excluded a political party from the list of election candidates. We are glad that out of the 1231 national observers, who will be present at the elections, 1217 will be from Promo-LEX”, stated Pavel Postica, head of the Promo-LEX Observation Mission.

Promo-LEX observers also referred to the problem of designating a special place for electoral posters, which exists in many settlements. The decisions to provide venues for meetings of the election candidates were taken without any violations. However, at least 603 cases were reported when the local authorities delayed the approval of such decisions.

Electronic version of the Report here.

The next Monitoring Report of Promo-LEX will be published on 12 June 2015.

Promo-LEX Observation Mission declares itself to be neutral and equidistant towards the election candidates; it is not an investigation body and does not assume the express obligation to support the observers’ findings by evidence.

The General Local Elections of 14 (28) June 2015 are monitored by Promo-LEX Association under its Monitoring Democratic Processes Program. The Observation Mission is part of the activities carried out by the civil society under the aegis of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections.

The Observation Mission of the General Local Elections of 14 (28) June 2015 is supported financially U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Council of Europe and benefits of technical assistance provided by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI).

The opinions presented in the report belong to authors and do not necessarily reflect the donors’ view.

For more information, please contact: Simion Ciochina, Press Officer of the Promo-LEX Observation Mission of the General Local Election of 2015, GSM: (+373) 69 11 96 94, email: [email protected]