The Party “Action and Solidarity” (PAS) considers judge Berdilo, who passed the decision to not validate the early mayoral elections held in Chisinau, showed lack of elementary understanding of the way Facebook works and of the way in which the voting option is formed, concluding that the 250,000 persons who watched the videos by which Andrei Nastase urged the people to vote influenced the election outcome. In an infographic on the party’s website entitled “Why the decision of judge Berdilo is ridiculous”, it is said that the court should have proven two things for such a conclusion to be valid.
According to the author Dan Perciun, the leader of the PAS youth organization, first of all it should have been determined how many of those persons who watched the videos on the election day were pro-European voters undecided about the participation in elections, have Moldovan nationality, are older than 18 and have the domicile in Chisinau. There are no such calculations in the argued judgment. The court held that all the 250,000 persons who watched the videos meet the aforementioned conditions, which is evidently false.
Secondly, the court should have presented a scientific argumentation of the action when the watching of a video urging to vote influences the citizens’ decision to go and vote. Such a methodology exists nowhere in the world because the decision to go and vote is influenced by tens of factors that cannot be gauged. “Definitely, if judge Berdilo presented such a methodology, she would deserve an international award. The calls to vote could have actually had the opposite effect to the desired one and could have mobilized the voters of the PSRM or could have had no effect in general or the videos could have been watched by persons who would have anyway voted,” said the author.
On June 19, the Chisinau City Court decided to not validate the election of Andrei Nastase as mayor of Chisinau. Under the argued judgment of the ordinary court, both Andrei Nastase and Ion Ceban campaigned on the election day, which is inadmissible according to the Election Code. Both of the candidates, through the agency of live streams on social networking sites, called on the electorate to vote. Even if these didn’t say who namely the people should vote for, the court decided that these actions had a significant impact on the voters’ option. On June 21, the Chisinau Appeals Court upheld the Court of Chisinau’s decision to not validate the election of Andrei Nastase as mayor of Chisinau. The lawyers for Nastase announced they will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Justice.
