The bill to amend the Law on Public Procurement, put forward by a group of MPs, can affect the people’s interests because it suggests that the signing of contracts for printing ballots and other electoral documents should not be regulated by the given law, said experts of the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC), who appraised the bill.
CAPC president Galina Bostan, in a news conference at IPN, said that if the bill is adopted by Parliament, more than necessary ballots could be printed, but this aspect is the most important one for not affecting the correctness of the electoral process. “Initially, it was envisioned that these contracts will go through public procurement and this happened in the previous electoral campaigns. It’s not clear why they decided now to renounce the filter with the government procurement,” she stated.
Expert Viorel Parvan said the informative note does not explain the opportunity of passing this bill. The bill authors say that in case of elections, the Central Election Commission may be unable to print the ballots in the conditions stipulated by the Law on Public Procurement. Thus, Commission should better negotiate contracts directly with state-run companies and enterprises.
The expert noted that such a proposal was formulated in 2014-2015, when a new version of the law was examined in Parliament. “But those proposals weren’t accepted by the parliamentary commission on economy, budget and finance, which, in its reports, said that such provisions run counter to the EU directives,” stated Viorel Parvan.
The experts consider that if the contracts for printing ballots and other electoral documents are signed in non-transparent conditions, in the absence of objective control, the electoral process will be in danger. Interested persons could influence the selected publishing house and the number of printed ballots or even could falsify these.
The CAPC’s appraisal report shows that the informative note does not contain the positive assessments of all the interested public institutions, while civil society wasn’t consulted on the issue. According to the experts, this bill cannot be accepted by the legislative body.
The examination was carried out within the project “Vulnerability expertise of draft normative and legal acts” that is supported financially by MATRA Rule of Law and Good Governance Program of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
