Moldovan electoral body's chief heard in parliament

Chisinau, 1 April /MOLDPRES/ - The head of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Iurie Ciocan, today was heard in parliament on the subject of turning down an initiative to organise a constitutional referendum on changing the way the head of state is elected, cutting the number of MPs to 71 and limiting the lawmakers in terms of immunity.  

A proposal on organising hearings was made by the leader of the Party of Socialists (PSRM), Igor Dodon, and was subsequently backed by most MPs.  

“A number of 400,000 opted for a constitutional referendum. I personally signed for its organisation. We do not understand why the Central Electoral Commission abusively afforded not to listen to the arguments of the initiative group and took this decision,” Igor Dodon said.

“Neither those present in the session hall know well-enough the arguments of the rejecting of the initiative to organise a referendum. There is also a contradiction of ideas. We have the decision of the Constitutional Court and the attempt to organise this referendum. It is necessary to learn all information,” the leader of the Democratic Party (PDM), Marian Lupu, said.    

According to the report by Iurie Ciocan, the commission found out that the initiative group failed to present 20,000 signatures from at least a half of the territorial and administrative units.  

“To initiate a republican constitutional referendum, the initiative group was to present at least 360,000 valid signatures for each proposed question, which were to come from at least 18 administrative and territorial units of the second level, and at least 20,000 signatures on backing this initiative should be registered in each of these units,” Iurie Ciocan said.

“Following the checking of the subscriber lists, CEC established that, out of 34 districts/municipalities, the sufficient number of signatures was collected only in three cases: in Chisinau, Balti and Orhei,” Ciocan added.   

On 14 March, the members of the Dignity and Truth Platform submitted to CEC over 400,000 signatures collected for carrying out a republican referendum on the revision of the Fundamental Law. A draft on Constitution’s amendment was submitted to CEC on 5 November 2015.

(Reporter A. Plitoc, editor A. Raileanu)