A number of nongovernmental organizations that formed the Civic Group for Equality call on the government to return to the old text of the Antidiscrimination Law that was published on May 4 and was discussed at public consultations. According to representatives of the Group, the new version of the bill titled the Law on the Equality of Chances includes a series of changes that are unacceptable and go against the commitments made by Moldova at foreign level, Info-Prim Neo reports. Arcadie Barbarosie, the director of the Public Policy Institute that forms part of the Civic Group, told a news conference that this law is passed on from a government to another, from the communist government to the democratic one, but the situation does not change or even worsens. “There is no political will and the importance of this law is not realized. This scandal is a show aimed at diverting public attention from the problems that the ruling alliance does not manage to solve. The authorities do not understand what sharing the European values and principles means,” he said. He also said that the authorities’ role is to explain to the people why such a law is needed and what its principles are. The Church should play a similar role. Several representatives of the Church speak in the name of the Orthodox Church without being authorized to. “The Church should in fact bring peace, not divide society,” stated Arcadie Barbarosie. In the same news conference, the lawyer for the Legal Resource Center Nadejda Hriptievski said the fight to prevent and combat discrimination should not apply to the equality of chances only. The Civic Group considers that the change of the law’s name is unacceptable and thus proposes a new, compromise name – the Law on Guaranteeing of Equality. Nadejda Hriptievski also said that the four criteria that were excluded from the bill, namely the sexual orientation, state of health, possessions, and sexual origin, were removed without a legal justification. According to her, the phrases ‘state of health’ and ‘sexual orientation’ were interpreted in the case law of the European Court and cannot be excluded. The head of the Resource Center for Human Rights (CReDO) Sergiu Ostaf said the council that will be empowered to implement the law should be depoliticized and its institutional mechanism should be strengthened. According to him, at least two members of the council must be selected from among candidates with experience in the area of human rights. “There is a tradition in Moldova that all the institutions should be influenced by the political class,” said Sergiu Ostaf. He also spoke about the different positions of the members of the ruling alliance. He said that the Liberal Party should review its position because it is a party that promotes the liberal and European values, while the Democratic Party should promote the social-democratic values. Only the Liberal Democratic Party is a promoter of these desiderata now. Antonita Fonari, the secretary of the National NGO Council of Moldova, said that the Civic Group for Equality asks the parliamentary groups and the leaders of the parliamentary parties to organize a meeting where to discuss the bill before it is debated in Parliament.