Ballot Placement Story

Already on the night before the first election campaign day,
about a dozen parties were queueing up to submit registration
documents to the Central Electoral Commission office. It is
traditionally believed in Moldova that an election success
depends partly on such a trifle as the party's location on the
ballot paper -- the higher the party name is printed on the list
the higher the chances.
 

Reform Party leader Mihai Ghimpu, for instance, explained that
the fiasco of his party at the 1998 election was because voters
could not find the Reform Party in the long list of other
formations. So, this year Ghimpu decided to sit the whole night
in his car at the CEC office door in order to be among the first
at submitting documents for registration. His example was
followed by several other parties.

 The Central Electoral Commission rejected yesterday the protests filed last Friday by
the Communist Party (MCP) and Democratic Party (DPM) concerning
the order of registering participants in the February 25parliamentary election.

According to existing rules, the Commission is supposed to
register participants in the same sequence as they submit
documents for registration, which exactly the CEC is doing these
days.

However, the Communists and Democrats claimed as not rightful
the queueing up, before the CEC door, by some parties 24 hours
before the documents acceptance beginning all for one purpose -
to be registered first.

The MCP and DPM maintained this was a direct violation of the
legislation, and demanded that the CEC must register first those
parties which arrived in the Commission office in the
law-stipulated time, i.e. starting from the first minute of the
day of January 12.

The CEC, however, regarded these arguments as unfounded, and
stated it would not revise the initial registration sequence. So
if the Christian Democratic People's Party (CDPP) was the first
to have submitted documents, it shall be the first on the
ballot-papers. Accordingly, the Communist Party is going to have
number 3 on the list, and the Democratic Party - number 7.