Several election commissioners recieved watches from the president after the elections. The Scoop-supported reporters were the first to get a photo of the watch.
On the back side the watch is signed by Vladimir Voronin. Photo:Simion Ciochina.
New dirty election tricks
Moldova was given the role as guinea-pig for tests of illegal electric election techniques. This seems to have given victory to the Communist party already in power.
By Lilia Gurez and Igor Volnitchi
Posted July 24, 2009
Moldova, a small, poor, ex-Soviet country, with a young democracy, which many times is not functional, is a perfect polygon for testing „dirty” electoral techniques. There has always been a suspicion that such techniques have been used for all 18 years of the country’s independence, and in 2009 it seems that this suspicion has been confirmed: against all expectations the elections on April 5 this year were won by the Communists. They have been in power since 2001; but their approval rate has kept falling during the latest years. However, the Communists Party received 60 seats out of 101 in the Parliament, i.e. four seats less then they did in 2005, when they enjoyed greater popularity. The communists even came out number one in districts where in their most „glorious” times they were less popular.
Deriving from this situation, the opposition parties accused the governing party of massive electoral fraud, use of dirty electoral techniques, providing data to prove it. The Communists kept repudiating these claims.
This investigation was supported by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism (FUJ).
It has been published in the Russian language newspaper Moldavskie vedomosti, in Romanian in the Jurnal de Chisinau, the Romanian news site Basarabia La Zi and the 3 language (Russian, Romanian and English) news site DECA-press.
To read the original story in English, please click here.
To read the original story in Romainian, please click here.
To read the original article in Russian, please click here.
To read the story as it was brought in the Danish newspaper Politiken, please click here.
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