During a recent session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the former President of Moldova’s Parliament and member of the Democrat Party, Andrian Candu, declared that the Council of Europe should follow developments in Moldova closely.

On October 3, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe held a session, welcoming the resilience and restraint of Moldovans in crisis situations. 

During the session Andrian Candu, former President of the Parliament and member of the Democratic Party gave a speech, accusing the current governing coalition of carrying out a “witch-hunt” against the leaders and members of the opposition parties. 

“Although we hear strong statements from the government about good intentions, unfortunately, the actions show [the] opposite. A real ‘witch-hunting’ [sic] was launched against the leaders and members of opposition parties. The opposition parliamentary parties are limited in their freedom of speech and actions. In many cases, important issues are brought on the parliamentary agenda without any preliminary notifications… Many abuses in breach of rules and procedures when the parliamentary immunity [of the deputies] is lifted,” Andrian Candu declared.

“Hundreds of people, professionals working in the government or other state institutions were fired just because they worked with previous governments. And this is happening while Moldova is facing a difficult challenge with the lack of qualified human resources, [with] many Moldovans leaving the country,” Candu added in his speech.

At the same time, the politician also claimed that although the coalition government formed from the Socialist Party and ACUM Bloc has stated their desire to depoliticize state institutions, their politicization is, in fact, taking place.

“The ruling coalition set up a very important goal: to depoliticize the institutions, for example the Constitutional Court. But unfortunately, again by the opposite [sic] we’ve seen an excessive politicization of the institutions. 

The majority of judges who were recently appointed to the Constitutional Court are members of the ruling parties. The President of the Constitutional Court is one of the leaders of the ruling party, the Socialist Party of Moldova,” Andrian Candu said in his speech.     

Candu mentioned that Moldova is facing different challenges, the most important being to find a way to strengthen state institutions, to reform the justice system, to fight corruption and to find ways to improve the economy and the standard of living of the population.

Andrian Candu called on the Council of Europe to follow closely what is happening in Moldova, noting that there is a huge risk that the current government will be a big failure.

Watch the whole session here.  

PHOTO: Video capture

Diana Severin,