Council of Europe urges ruling Alliance and Communists to have dialogue

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly adopted a resolution last week, urging the Alliance for European Integration and the Party of Communists to engage in dialogue in order to overcome the political crisis and to elect a head of state.

Josette Durrieu (France, Socialist Group) and Egidijus Vareikis (Lithuania, EPP/CD), the two co-rapporteurs for Moldova, asked that Moldovan authorities engage in "far-reaching reform," and recommended that both the Alliance and the Communists consider changing the Constitution in order to allow the direct election of the President.

A draft of the resolution can be accessed here.

Moldovans elected their President by popular ballot until 2000, when the Communists managed to push through a change in the Constitution that transferred the appointment of the head of state to Parliament. Legislators now elect the President with a 61-M.P. majority out of 101. Both after April 5 and after July 29, neither the Communists nor the anti-Communist parties had the necessary number of votes to single-handedly push through their own candidates. In fact, the early elections of July 29 were a direct cause of the failure of the Party of Communists to get one more vote to elect its candidate.

As a result, many have suggested that a return to a direct presidential election would be a solution to a possible long-term stalemate between the Communists and the Alliance.

Ruling Alliance members have often expressed a desire for a direct Presidential election, while the Communists are adamantly against it.

h/t www.jurnal.md