The final report of the Promo-LEX monitoring mission draws recommendations for improving the electoral process

The monitoring of the early parliamentary elections on November 28, 2010 final report launched by the Promo-LEX association concludes the monitoring effort’s activity and includes the main tendencies reported by the observers, the effort’s concerns and the recommendations aimed at improving the electoral process in the Republic of Moldova.

The Promo-LEX effort has reported a balanced performance of both the public and the electoral administrations. It also observed that the majority of the electoral competitors have carried out diverse and active campaigns in a healthy competitive environment. Voters have demonstrated an increased interest in the electoral process, providing a massive presence on the election day. The results of the specialized operations carried out by Promo-LEX have largely confirmed the official results, both for the initial count and for the votes recount.

Nevertheless, the electoral process demonstrated a number of deviations from existing national electoral procedures and international democratic electoral practices. Some of these deviations were of sporadic nature, while others were systemic. Electoral competitors failed to demonstrate financial transparency and isolated cases of violence and intolerance overshadowed the electoral campaign.
Moreover, Promo-LEX found that the processes of counting and of recounting the votes involve an excessive use of logical controls, thus making these processes susceptible to human error. Regretfully, the monitoring effort found a passiveness from the side of voters as far as verifying the correctness of their entry into the voting rolls.

“Although the November 28 elections have represented an active democratic exercise, we remain concerned about the limited transparency of the main decisions taken as part of the electoral process”, said Pavel Postica, Deputy Chief of the Monitoring Effort. “Announcing the date of elections, amending the electoral legislation in a hasty manner, campaign financing and clashes between competitors, over-night held recount – all these could shatter in the future the voters’ trust in the electoral process.”

Based on the reported tendencies, the monitoring effort has formulated a list of concerns which are grouped based on the weight of the following criteria: the number, the geography and the repetition in time of the findings; the consequences on the electoral processes and on the involved persons; the expediency of the intervention from the part of the authorities. These concerns served as basis for putting together a list of recommendations made in good faith and aimed at contributing to the improvement of the electoral processes and raising the level of trust of the population towards elections.

Promo-LEX has carried out the long term monitoring of the electoral period in the context early parliamentary elections from November 28, 2010 within the framework of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections. The effort has monitored the electoral process in all the electoral districts of the Republic of Moldova in the period October 6 – December 27, 2010. The Promo-LEX monitoring team has included 42 long term observers, 30 medium term observers and approximately 2,400 short term observers. The observers’ activity has been coordinated by a central team which, among others, was responsible for training all the observers in the field of electoral procedures and of the non-partisan and independent character of the monitoring effort.

Promo-LEX has carried out a parallel vote tabulation operation (PVT), a qualitative and quantitative quick count of votes (Quick Count), a monitoring of the election day using mobile teams. For the vote recount, Promo-LEX has conducted a parallel tabulation of the recount results. The effort has published 4 interim reports during the electoral campaign, 3 interim reports on election day, has issued press releases on 3 special operations carried out on election day and has drafted the present final report.

Promo-LEX is a non-governmental, non-partisan and not-for-profit organization, promoting in the Republic of Moldova, including in the Transnistrian region, of democratic values and of international human right standards. The Promo-LEX monitoring effort was implemented with technical and financial assistance from the United States Embassy in Moldova, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). The opinions expressed in this report belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the donors.

The full copy of the report is available below.

For more details, please contact: Ion Manole, Head of the Promo-LEX Monitoring Effort: Tel: (22) 450024, GSM: 069070800, e-mail: info@promolex.md