“Promo-LEX” Association has announced the launch of the effort to monitor the November 30 parliamentary elections, presenting simultaneously the first pre-electoral monitoring report for the period between August 1 and September 24, 2014. The association’s executive director Ion Manole said that “Promo-LEX” will have observers in each electoral district and will publish monitoring reports on Thursdays every three weeks, IPN reports.
According to the pre-electoral report, a number of parties started the election campaign earlier than allowed. Pavel Postica, head of the monitoring effort mission, stated that only 7 of the 16 recommendations made by “Promo-LEX” after the parliamentary elections of 2010 and the local elections of 2011 were fulfilled by the Central Election Commission (CEC).
Pavel Postica welcomed particular changes to the Election Code, including the empowerment of the Central Election Commission to be the only authority responsible for the compilation of the voter rolls. Earlier, the rolls were compiled by the local public authorities. Another modification welcomed by Pavel Postica is the defining of the notions of ‘electoral present” and ‘corruption of voters’. “We hope that the competent bodies will make use of these notions and will implement the law when violations are identified in this respect,” he stated.
Postica underlined the importance of the adoption by the CEC of regulations concerning the financing of parties in the election campaign, saying both “Promo-LEX” and its foreign partners consider that these regulations are good. “However, Parliament failed to pass in the second reading a bill that is intended to further increase the transparency of party and election campaign funding,” he said.
As to shortcomings, Pavel Postica mentioned the fact that even if the CEC has already 66 accredited observers, these haven’t been yet issued with permits. Thus, they encounter difficulties in obtaining information from politicians and the local public authorities. In some of the cases, the observers of “Promo-LEX” were even intimidated.
The monitoring of the November 30 parliamentary elections by “Promo-LEX” Association forms part of the civil society’s activities carried out within the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections. The monitoring campaign is supported technically by the U.S. National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Council of Europe and the Stefan Batory Foundation, and is financed by the Solidarity Fund within the Support for Democracy Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.
