Following in the footsteps of the Alliance for Clean Romania, members of Moldovan civil society joined forces in the fight against corruption by launching the “Clean Moldova” online platform. The website is a space for discussion and analysis regarding political corruption and conflicts of interest, directed at voters, journalists, politicians, and public authorities. The main goal of this project is to prevent the election of dishonorable or corrupt political candidates, by presenting and disseminating information regarding their integrity, obtained through monitoring activities. Representatives of the two anti-corruption platforms met in June 2013 in Bucharest within the framework of a best practice transfer programme financed by the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society in Romania.
The Romanian anti-corruption alliance has been consolidated into a permanent platform following the Coalition for a Clean Parliament. This initiative monitored integrity of candidates to the national and European Parliaments in the 2004, 2007 and 2008 elections. It was followed by the Coalition for a Clean Government (starting in 2005) and the Coalition for Clean Universities (2009, 2010). The Moldovan alliance, similarly, was created by seven non-governmental organisations in November 2008, following the popular Civic Initiative for a Clean Parliament (CICP) project.
The new platform organises public events on the operation of control institutions and the effectiveness of public policies in promoting the integrity of public officials, and also seeks to support informational media campaigns on the integrity of public officials. It includes various resources as well, such as excerpts from national and European legislation and links to relevant media articles on the topics of integrity and anti-corruption. Moreover, the editorial team is conducting journalistic investigations with particular attention to cases related to the integrity of public officials reported by the media. Similarly to the Alliance for Clean Romania, Clean Moldova also presents cases of undeclared conflicts of interests of public officials. The Moldovan portal also published blacklists of corrupt politicians and brief updates about the legal proceedings initiated against the Civic Initiative for a Clean Parliament by political parties and politicians whose names were included in the lists of candidates who did not meet the integrity standards.
The composing seven entities are: Association for Participatory Democracy “ADEPT”, Association for Independent Press (API), Centre for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information Promotion Centre, The Independent Journalism Center, Journalistic Investigations Center , and Soros Foundation Moldova, which also provides financial support.
There is a strong need for such a portal in Moldova, members say, as recent poll results revealed that every other citizen thinks most, if not all, politicians are corrupt and unworthy of being elected in the local or national government. This shows that there is a public that can greatly benefit for such an initiative with more information on integrity of politicians.
(The picture featured above is from obozrevatel.com.)