Igor Dodon elected chairman of Party of Socialists

MP Igor Dodon was elected the leader of the Party of Socialists of Moldova (PSRM) in the party’s tenth extraordinary congress on December 18. The congress also elected other executive bodies of the party and adopted a Resolution and a Call to the people, Info-Prim Neo reports. The party’s president of honor Veronica Abramchuk said that according to the results of the primaries – a system that was used by the PSRM to elect the chairman for the first time – Igor Dodon emerged victorious among the four candidates fielded by the members and supporters of the party. This was also confirmed by the votes of most of the delegates to the congress. In his speech, Igor Dodon said the Socialists will modernize the economy by attracting investments based on modern technology and will make changes in such areas as the budgetary-fiscal policy, investment safety and the economic judiciary system so that the national and foreign investors be protected and motivated to invest in Moldova. He also said that in the social sphere they will plead for the annual increase in salaries, pensions, student awards and social benefits, combating of criminality and maintenance of public order, ensuring of quality education and accessible medicine so that every person had yearly by a medical examination paid for by the state. In the political sphere, the Party of Socialists will plead for statehood and responsibility. At internal level, the Socialists will struggle for the country’s reunification by grating Transnistria a special status, and will make effort to improve the relations with Gagauzia. According to the chairman of the PSRM, it is very important to build a Moldovan civic nation and promote abroad the image of a peaceful Moldova with hardworking and talented people. Igor Dodon said the Government should be depoliticized by forming an exclusively technocrat Government in the future. At foreign level, the PSRM will take steps to obtain the liberalized visa regime and asymmetric economic relations with the European countries. In his speech, the newly elected leader of the PSRM spoke about the necessity of ensuring the organizational consolidation of the party with a view to taking part in ordinary parliamentary elections or possible early elections. In the congress, there were read congratulatory messages from a series of foreign officials, including former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who heads the Kwasniewski Foudnation and the Polish Socialist movement, and Anatoli Kinah, a member of the Committee on National Security and Defense of Ukraine’s Supreme Rada and adviser to the Ukrainian President. In the Resolution and the Call to the people, the PSRM condemned the ruling alliance’s inability to elect the head of state and the MPs’ irresponsibility towards the people and announced the intention to launch a campaign to collect signatures in favor of holing a referendum on modifying the procedure for electing the MPs. The congress involved about 700 delegates, invitees from abroad, representatives of the diplomatic corps, Moldovan NGOs and the mass media.