IDIS study: 2008 was dominated by political tension, pre-electoral regrouping and poverty

The year 2008 was dominated by political tension, pre-electoral regrouping and poverty, while the living standard of ordinary people remain difficult, or even harder than in the past. The conclusions are in the a study called “100 most pressing problems of Moldova in 2008”, presented Wednesday by the IDIS Viitorul think tank, Info-Prim Neo reports. IDIS expert Vitalie Grosu finds that the abuses related to Moldovan journalists grew to become a practice tolerated by the state bodies. The expert forecasts the media's state will worsen because of involution in the areas of human rights and freedoms, and of the approaching parliamentary elections in April 2009, reads a press release by IDIS. According to the research, another pressing problem is the lack of transparency and public control over most of public authorities. “Society is deeply concerned with the lack of transparency of some institutions directly involved in the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict, with selecting media depending on ideological proximity, filtering information and creating major obstacles,” says Vitalie Grosu. He adds that not reforming the security sector was a pressing issue in 2009. “Despite the Government's assurance that Moldova won't be affected by the crisis, its symptoms are already felt n society and industry, trade and agriculture,” says another IDIS expert, Mihail Salvir. Rferring to major economic problems, Salvir says the investments are insufficient in the infrastructure of roads, the agricultural policies are incoherent, while the natural gas is as expensive as in Europe. On the social plane, in 2008 the people had the same problems as the previous year, facing deep demographic crisis. Since 1991, the population lowered 350,000, finds sociologist Diana Cheianu-Andrei. After 2012, the number and share of working people will decrease, the expert says. Another pressing social issue, highlighted in the study, is the social condition of the elderly, the high cost of life in Moldova, the trends of young brain drain. Moldova had to suffer because of its negative image in 2008, too. Thus, foreign media writing about Moldova approached the same topics: poverty, trafficking in human beings and organs, the Transnistrian conflict. The research was compiled by analyzing media contents. The criteria used by the experts are the frequency of appearance, impact, dynamics, proportion of the problem. The think tank has produced such a research for the third year in a row.